Imagine if you can, a world without that stinky can in the corner of the kitchen. No heaps of refuse at the curb once a week. No bill every month to haul it away.

Imagine: No dumps. No landfills. No garbage trucks. No garbage. Period.

Chris Burger can imagine it. In fact, the Whitney Point computer software engineer and his wife, Cindy, have made a life practice of imagining it. "Basically, we don't buy things that cannot be recycled or composted," he says.

"We bring our own cloth bags and fill up at supermarkets, and also always keep one or two folded up plastic bags in a hip pocket," Burger says. "We reuse them again and again and never need new ones. They fold up very neatly."

The couple always buys in bulk, and while some pharmaceuticals are "a problem," any plastic bottles are recycled. "Composite materials, or packaging within packaging, like my Claritan, for example, are a problem," he says. "There is no way to recycle these."

The result of the couple's careful purchasing, however, is that they each produce about 3/4 of a pound a year in garbage. The average American, meanwhile, produces 4 1/2 pounds a day. "It's pretty appalling," Burger says.

Reducing garbage production to little or even nothing is the concept behind the "zero waste" movement, a growing call to arms by environmentalists that suggests the very concept of "waste" be tossed out. It is a topic Burger discussed earlier this month at the Jewish Community Center in Vestal, with an evening PowerPoint seminar with tips for families, businesses and communities.

There are plenty of ways to cut back on waste, Burger says, "that you can easily adopt into your life."

It just takes being a conscious and conscientious consumer, willing to put a little thought and care into the things you buy.

A growing ethos

"Zero waste suggests that the entire concept of waste should be eliminated," says Larry Chalfen, director of the Zero Waste Alliance in Portland, Ore., and one of the gurus of the zero waste movement. "Instead, waste should be thought of as ... a potential resource."

That means taking the stuff we toss and giving it new life via recycling. Right now, say Chalfen, Burger and others, most people are following a linear system of consumption. We buy things, we use them and then we throw out the waste -- and a lot of it at that. What we need to espouse, as individuals, businesses and a society as a whole, they say, is a circular system: A loop in which everything we obtain can be used and then reborn into something new that can be reused.

"A guiding principle for the Zero Waste Alliance is that just as nature is cyclical with no waste, our industries and society can be similarly cyclical and not allow toxic or hazardous materials to build up in nature," Chalfen says.

Too much packaging

"The truth is, most of what we buy ends up in the trash," says Mary Goldenberg, a Vestal mother of two. "I would say there is at least one trash can a week with 3 1/2 tall kitchen bags' worth of garbage."

What is in those bags?

"Food scraps, paper, used napkins and Styrofoam containers," she says. "It seems like everything we buy has an awful lot of packaging and it adds to our trash. If you buy one tiny CD for the computer, it comes in a box; a child's toy comes with all this plastic and a hundred twisty ties."

Goldenberg would like to make less trash, "but how do you do it?" she asks. "I worry, I really do, about all this garbage we produce."

People are frequently told to combat waste production by composting. "We used to try to do that, with watermelon rinds, old bread etc.," Goldenberg says. "But no more. With bear populations on the rise, we have been urged not to throw food scraps or organic materials out, so we don't entice these bears."

One solution for families like Goldenberg's, who fear that food garbage may attract bears to the yard and house area, is to purchase a home composting machine like the Terracycle Premium Red Wine Oak Barrel Rotary Composter, available at Home Depot for $129.

Out of sight, out of mind

While Goldenberg stresses over the future of her garbage, most people do not. Typical Americans, surveys show, give little thought to where their garbage will end up after it leaves their homes. The second that it is hauled away or tossed in the bin, it vanishes for them.

Where does our garbage really go? "Our trash in Broome County ends up in the Nanticoke Landfill off Knapp Hill Road," says Burger. It is a place worth visiting if you have never been there, he suggests. There are places to put recyclables, like plastics, glass, paper/cardboard and metals.

But the most obvious feature about the landfill for Burger is "that this virtual landscape of waste is finite in scope. It cannot grow forever. You can cover it up, you can look the other way, but it will never disappear."

And it is producing, Burger points out, noxious and earth-harming methane, a greenhouse gas.

"It is what used to be a beautiful valley. Now it is a mountain of trash," Burger says. "They do their best to capture the fumes and gas. But it smells on occasion, and what you are smelling are toxic elements -- greenhouse gas 103 times more potent than CO2 (carbon dioxide)."

The landfills, once filled, Burger says "don't go away. We're warehousing our waste, taking all our individual bags of garbage and putting them into one big giant bag, in essence, and it sits there for future generations to deal with."

Waste criminals

Ultimately, the producers of goods in our society bear a very big responsibility for this problem, say Chalfin and Burger.

"They design products and the packaging they come in," Burger says. "If packaging is pure plastic, then it can be recycled," he says. "But when it is combined with other composite materials, like aluminum foil glued to a paper substrate, there is nothing you can do with that material -- it cannot be recycled."

Zero waste advocates point out a lot of snack food packaging comes packaged in ways that are un-recyclable, such as utilizing a plastic outer liner with foil fused inside. The main thing to keep in mind, says Burger, is to buy products that can be taken apart and recycled.

"Think about it," Burger says. "Just about everything we purchase today involves some layer of packaging, whether it be plastic, paper or another material. Things come in wrappings, almost universally, and that is one of the first things we must let go of as individuals, families and communities. In short, we need to rethink the whole way we think about life, from eating to building homes to clothing ourselves."

Certainly, Burger says, there is some responsibility for government to think about regulating certain un-recyclable products or rewarding companies with tax cuts, for smart products that can be automatically recreated, "like computer ink cartridges, which can be sent back to the companies who make them where they refill them and sell them again."

But there is also a lot that can be done by individuals and families, to work toward zero waste.

"Think about what you buy," Burger says, "and grow an awareness about the waste that it will create. Then have a plan."