Dave Chameides is probably a very nice -- and interesting -- fellow, but if you're visiting Los Angeles, you might want to stay away from his home.

For the past eight months, Mr. Chameides has been saving all of his trash. He throws nothing away, as part of a year-long experiment in environmental consumerism. Pizza boxes, empty soda bottles, plastic wrap, food scraps and other used items all go into his basement, where he has worms deliberately chewing through his compost.

"Whenever I tell people what I'm doing, there's always that look -- the furrowed brow and then the 'I'm sorry? You're doing what?'" he told The Associated Press. "I tell people I know this is nuts."

The television cameraman -- who is chronicling his quest on his blog, "365 Days of Trash" -- had already shown his environmental enlightenment by driving a hybrid car, installing compact fluorescent bulbs and using solar panels. With his new project, he's so careful about consumption that he takes his own cutlery and plates out with him so he won't have to use throwaway dining utensils.

He has about 30 pounds of garbage to show for his efforts, while the average American would have generated about 900 pounds in the same eight months. That means if you've been consuming a lot more than normal lately, no need to feel guilty about it -- Dave Chameides has you covered.

If you're in the mood to feel guilty anyway from what you're doing to the only planet you're likely to ever know, here's some suitable data from the Web site of the Clean Air Council. It's one of those environmental organizations that specializes in guilt creation:

• Each day the United States throws away enough trash to fill 63,000 garbage trucks (most of which seem to be on a route slowing my commute to work).

• Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. (If you see a few thousand that are still half-full when tossed, those are from my kids. Send them over.)

• Every year, Americans make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas. (Great idea!)

The Harrisburg area's Society of Women Environmental Professionals wasn't quite up to Mr. Chameides' level of commitment, but earlier this year, its members spent a week retaining their rubbish -- even transporting it from home to work -- in order to get a better sense of what they generate each day.

As they watched the trash pile up around their desks, it gave them pause about such activities as ordering takeout pizza, buying plastic cups of coffee and receiving glossy catalogs in the mail. The average person supposedly creates 4.6 pounds of trash each day, which eventually becomes a heavy burden if you try to avoid the local landfill.

"Having to carry it around with you for a week, it lends new perspective," one participant, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Chief Counsel Kimberly Hummel, told Waste News.

All of this talk about conservation and waste avoidance makes one wonder why personalities such as William Williams sometimes come across as wack jobs instead of enlightened pioneers.

Mr. Williams, of Cecil, was profiled in this newspaper a month ago for his refusal to connect to his local utilities, most recently the local sewage system. Shunning electricity and other modern conveniences, he's been to jail previously for his stubborn principles of living "off the grid."

For his trouble, this modern-day Thoreau faces potential new legal problems if he doesn't join the rest of us using the public sewage system. We get the idea the ornery, strong-willed Mr. Williams would be either very interesting or very unpleasant to live next to, but regardless, no one can complain about the size of his carbon footprint.

"People let their wants outpace their needs, and that's why we're in economic trouble now," Mr. Williams said of his simple lifestyle. Sounds like someone we might all learn from, though it's going to be hard to give up the washing machine.