Sometimes this blog tries to answer the simple questions and other times it tackles the bigger issues. It is time to answer one of the simpler questions.What Can You Do to Reduce the Amount of Trash in Your Household?
Let's talk about the most obvious ones first. Don't throw away aluminum cans or plastic bottles. Place those in your recycle bin and then take them down to the recycling center the next time you are running errands in that area. Don't forget to recycle any glass products, paper and cardboard products too. Recycling just these few things will eliminate a huge amount of trash from the landfills and that will surely help our environment. Did you know that over 1/3 of the average American's trash is made up of product packaging like bottles, cans, cardboard packages, etc.?
Okay, now let's get into the less obvious ways of reducing trash in your household. One way is to buy in bulk. How does that reduce trash. More product is one package will reduce trash by reducing the amount of packaging. Another less obvious way of reducing trash is to avoid disposables. Our society is used to buying items that are meant to be used once or twice and then thrown away. Choose cloth napkins instead of paper, cloth diapers instead of disposables, metal and ceramic dinnerware instead of plastic and paper. Always use items that last.
Reuse some of those packages that normally get thrown away. I reused glass Prego jars to hold nails, screws and other small items in my workshop. Toilet paper rolls can be used in school projects. Save them and give them to a kindergarten teacher. They are always looking for items to use in arts and crafts projects. other items they love are egg cartons, small tubes packaging like Pringles tubes and even old shoe boxes.
Get off junk mailing lists. there are services out there that will do this for you. if you cannot find one, the next time you get a junk mailer, find their phone number on it and call them requesting to be taken off their mailing list.
Landfills are full of plastic bags that are full of dead leaves. The leaves will decompose. The bags will not. Create a compost heap and decompose your lawn waste. This one thing will save a huge area of our landfills and the earth will be better off for it. Did you know that at least one landfill per day closes in America?
Finally, do not throw away your bigger items. Give them to a thrift store or have them repaired. If you get a new television, give your old one to a thrift store. Someone would love to have that television. Give your old clothes away. Don't throw them away. There are huge businesses out there that sell nothing but recycled clothes and keeping those clothes out of the landfills is a wonderful thing to do.
There are many other ways to reduce the trash in your household. It does not have to be difficult. It takes just a second to think if that item you are throwing away could be reused, recycled or given away. Do you have other ideas? Leave them by commenting on this post.
