Editor's note: In our Go-Green Challenge series, everyday families tackle tasks in an effort to improve the health of the planet. Previous installments featured the 100-mile diet. Here, we follow a family's attempt to recycle everything — yes, zero trash — for an entire week.

Can you go a week without making any trash?

For the Imig family, who were eco-conscious to start with, it seemed the challenge would be in finding more ways to improve their performance.

The 'Aiea family of three already have a worm composting setup on their lanai, recycling bins in their apartment parking lot and a very gung-ho leader in mom Christen. Even with a 16-week-old baby, there weren't mountains of messes to scale back — but scale back they did.

"It went pretty well," said Christen Imig, a fifth-grade teacher at St. Elizabeth's who is on maternity leave with baby Jordyn. "I thought we couldn't improve things, but we did."

The week before the challenge, there were 12 pounds of trash. After seven days of steady recycling and planning, it fell to 4 pounds.

And it might have been even less if not for an early misstep — ordering to-go food wrapped in lots of disposable packaging — by dad Tyler Imig.

"It was the second day," confessed the 'Aiea High math teacher. "It wasn't the best start for Team Imig."

To wit: He'd run an errand with the car that ended up taking longer than expected. Nearly felled by hunger pangs, Tyler soon found himself headed to McDonald's for a pancake plate.

He polished off the food, then stared in disbelief at what remained: a meal container, napkin, plastic utensils, plastic syrup packet and butter containers, a paper sheet that covered the tray and plastic that had been wrapped around the utensils.

"When I saw the amount of waste that breakfast produced, I felt guilty," said Tyler. "I thought, 'Wow, Christen's gonna be bummed.'

"It just came down to not planning ahead. I was in a rush. I could have made something to go in a reusable container. ... That was my only major collapse."

How did they manage to trim their trash to less weight than a carton of milk?

First, there was careful planning with Tamara Li Farnsworth of Green Irene (www.greenirene.com/tamarahonolulu), who's part green consultant and part cheerleader. She met with the Imigs a few days before the challenge began on Oct. 12.

Farnsworth checked the garbage, talked through baby needs (she's a mom herself) and came up with suggestions to not only raise their recycling quotient but cut trash.

"Where are you (now)?" Farnsworth asked. "You're already composting, so there's awareness."

Some of the suggestions were a bit extreme, even for Christen Imig — i.e., reusable cloth toilet wipes, anyone?

Others were eye openers. Farnsworth suggested taking Tupperware-style containers out to eat to carry home leftovers, or even straight to the store to buy bulk.

After his McDonald's meltdown, Tyler redeemed himself admirably at Down to Earth, the grocery store where his wife once worked. There, he showed up with his own containers to buy food in bulk: cereal, peanut butter, honey, etc.

Without cluing the staff in to his challenge, he simply explained that he was using reusable containers. They didn't blink an eye, but simply weighed the containers empty, then did the math when the containers were full, he said.

"They were more than accommodating," said Tyler.

Other changes had a higher degree of difficulty and required a bit more finesse.

"The baby stuff was challenging," Christen admitted, adding that when Jordyn's grandparents had her in their care, a few disposable wipes and diapers snuck in along with the carefully planned cloth diapers and cloth wipes they were using.

But she made changes — sending chopsticks to the compost heap, recycling the paper in junk mail (tearing the plastic out of the envelope windows first), and even taking her own plate and utensils to a potluck.

"We had a good time, challenging ourselves," she said. "I tried to talk more to people. When I refuse a bag at a store, I explain why I'm doing it — 'I want to cut down on the waste I produce.' It's about education."

Added Tyler: "My take on it is, we've always been conscious of our waste, more so now. It's been a great experience for us."