Let's face it: Earth Day gets no respect. Sure, today we may take the extra five steps to throw our Tab cans into the recycling bin rather than the trash, but tomorrow we'll be back to powering our SUVs with Liquid Spotted Owls (or is that just me?). My guess is that tonight your local news channel will interview some hippie-looking dude who will give you some tips on recycling that you already knew, mention global warming 87 times, and then cut to commercial. Only Arbor Day gets less respect.

But for me, that's changing this year. I decided to do my part by performing a little experiment to see how much trash I generate. Why? Well, this way I can identify where I can and should cut back. So like your crazy Uncle Eugene, I decided to carry my trash around with me. Unlike Eugene, though, I only did it for one day.

I picked a random weekday, stuck a trash bag into my backpack, and headed out the door. Throughout the day, any trash I generated went into the bag. Napkins? In the bag. Paper cups? In the bag. Used tissues? Well, those I threw out, because they're gross, but used a stand-in for the end-of-day weigh in. Sure, the stand-ins may have been a bit wasteful, but this is for science, so cut me some slack.

The result was 1.5lbs of trash. Surprisingly little, I think.

Another surprise was how much of it was recyclable via my town's recycling program (1.1lbs).

Overall, I'm taken aback by these results. I thought the total trash weight would be much higher, and the recyclable amount would be much lower. Perhaps the day I chose was not typical, but it didn't feel it was.

Now, I know this experiment is fundamentally flawed. It doesn't take into effect all the gas fumes my car and home generate, nor does it count the items I only use part of, but will throw out later — like the orange juice container in the photo that I happened to finish that day. But it's a start. It made me realize that my breakfast routine of two oatmeal packets in a paper cup is pretty wasteful, and that I get a lot of junk mail. These are things I can do something about.

Of course, trash generation is only one aspect of being environmentally conscious. There's also home energy efficiency, driving/shopping habits, etc. Here are some great resources for becoming more aware of, and helping reduce, your impact on the world:

Fun: myfootprint.org - See how much of the world's resources you're consuming via a great quiz. (My score: 27 acres)

Informative: The Omnivore's Dilemma - A surprisingly readable study of our food system, partially focusing on the resources required to bring food to your local megamart.

Delicious: Soda Club - An interesting mail-order soda program, which can hopefully reduce the amount of plastic and metal a soda drinker like myself produces.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: global warming, global warming, global warming.