Your garbage v. my garbage

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend yesterday on a most unexpected topic: garbage. I have no idea how we came to discuss it, but in the end we decided that her family produces about twice as much garbage as my family does. We are both married with two similarly-aged kids (and both, it's important to note, ecominded), but my family typically has one garbage can of trash per week (with two or three tall kitchen bags inside, to be specific) and her family typically has two cans. Without sorting through our actual garbage to see the differences, we talked about what generally gets thrown out and what gets recycled and there were no discernible differences between us. We ultimately determined that the difference was a result of the types of packaging we bought our products in -- she generally buys in small or "standard" quantities and I generally buy in bulk. I buy jugs of juice and serve it to the kids in (reusable) sippy cups; she buys juice boxes. She buys snack packs of crackers (like goldfish crackers) and I buy the gigantic 2.5+ pound box and serve them to the kids in a bowl. We were amazed at how much of a difference the packaging could make in the amount of garbage we generate. How does your garbage measure up?