La Porte County woman saves her trash to blog online

A Michigan City woman is going through her trash to show you how important it is to recycle.

"Our consumption of everything, our resources, has consequences,” said Alicia Ebaugh, an Environmental Educator for the La Porte County Solid Waste District. 

“When you're done with things you just throw them away and you're done with it and it's gone. You don’t think about it anymore. But what happens to those things is they don't go away, they just go somewhere else,” said Ebaugh.

Ebaugh works for the La Porte County Solid Waste District.

"I teach kids about recycling. I go to the schools and teach classes about that as well, I do public outreach events,” said Ebaugh.

She has been documenting her trash and recycled materials on her blog.

"I want people to see the impact that one person has and when you multiply that by all the resident of La Porte County which is more than 110,000 people then by all the people in the United States you can see where this might become an issue,” said Ebaugh.

She has collected bags and bags of things that shouldn't just go straight into the trash bin and she walked me through her collection.

"So there's straws in there. In this bag I have paper items. I consolidated all of my fast food cups. [In here] paper plates because you can’t recycle paper plates,” said Ebaugh.

She even goes into further detail about why waste reduction is crucial.

"The receipt paper is not recyclable because it has chemicals on it,” said Ebaugh.

So far, Ebaugh has gained a following online and even convinced a friend to join in on this challenge.