Everyone should read his book, by the way.
I have noticed that I seem to create a lot of the stuff Oscar covets, though, particularly of the "medical" kind.
Test strips alone are a lot. (Four finger sticks a day times an average of 30 days a month is 120 strips, plus packaging.) And little bloody tissues take up a bunch of space. (Also times at least four- more when my pump is trying to get into Automode, but that's a different blog.) And don't even get me started on the sensor and pump set packing.
Too late.
On July 1st I started to collect all of the diabetes related trash that I created in a gallon zip lock bag, just to see how much of keeping me alive was polluting the planet. Halfway through the month I needed a new bag, and there have been a few things (mostly bloody tissues) that I have forgotten to stash and threw away. By the end of July I had two very full gallon zip lock bags full of medical garbage. If I'm really honest I was expecting more.
Sesame Street and Oscar © Sesame Workshop
But then I started to think about the math. If I fill up two one-gallon bags each month, that's 24 gallons of trash every year that I throw away. I can recycle the boxes that the pump supplies come in, but the rest of it has to hit the landfill. 24 gallons of trash doesn't seem like that much over the course of a year...but then you figure I've been on the pump for about fourteen, and have had sensors for the last six, at least, and before that I was using syringes four times a day...so let's even guess just a gallon a month for that...
I've probably thrown out 240+ gallons of diabetes trash at least since I started on the pump, and maybe 300 gallons of trash before that. Honestly, it's probably more like 450 gallons, because 4 shots a day and two different types of insulin instead of the one, plus extra blood tests, and therefore extra lancets means it was probably closer to 1.5 gallons of trash instead of just one. That's 690+ gallons of diabetes related trash over my lifetime.
If you figure that a standard size drag it down to the curb trash can is about 32-35 gallons, that means I have filled at least between nineteen and twenty-one (and a half) trash cans with needles, bloody tissues, test strips, pump containers, used alcohol wipes, and various other sundries.
Then take into account that there are over 30 million people living in the US with diabetes, but only about 1.5 million of them have Type I , and that's more math than I am willing to do at any given time. That's a lot of trash.
We need a damn cure, people. I don't even think Oscar the Grouch would want to touch this stuff.
