Reduce Reuse Recycle saving the
PLANET one CHANGE at a time.
Reduce Reuse Recycle The phrase reduce, reuse, recycle refers to the recommended sequence of activities for treating materials to make better use of materials so that we create less damage to the environment. In addition to the primary advantages to our environment, these 3Rs also provide other benefits, such as financial savings. First, when possible, reduce or don’t use resources you don’t need. One of the easiest ways to do this is to stop using up things where you aren’t making use of them. For instance, turn out the lights when you don’t need them. Don’t run the water when you aren’t using it.
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Second, by reusing, we also reduce the amount of new resources that will be used. Reuse can be facilitated by using objects that are sturdy or built well. longer need or want things with people who could use them. The third category is often the one we think of first. Recycling is good for the environment, but not as good as the first two choices. Recycling takes energy. Turn in your bottles, paper, cardboard and other items into formal recycling programs. Many places have effective recycling programs. Here’s how you can help!
Why Should You
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Recycle?
Americans throw away enough plastic bottles each year to circle the earth four times.
Recycling one ton of paper saves seventeen trees. Five recycled bottles makes enough to stuff a ski jacket. Every hour we throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles. That’s 22 billion a year.
Recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television or computer for three hours.
Reducing
Landfill Waste If you’re an average American, you produce 4.4 pounds of trash every single day. In a nation of nearly 324 million people, that amounts to more than 700,000 tons of garbage produced every day, enough to fill around 60,000 garbage trucks. That is a shocking amount of waste. Reduce, reuse, recycle. These three words have become synonymous with “lighter” or “green” living. Unfortunately, too often the first two words in this mantra are completely forgotten. This is a shame because the way we should be employing these words is in the order they appear. First, we should reduce our consumption. The best way to reduce our trash problem is to simply consume less. Much of what we buy in the developed world we don’t really need. And since we are currently using up the resources that our grandchildren will need to live, it only makes sense that we drastically cut back on what we buy today. Reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills is easier than you think.
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How You Can Do It... A landfill site not only has a bad effect on the tourism industry but also badly pollutes clean water and air. Polluted air and water has a negative effect on the health of humans, animals and marine life. Believe it or not, the throwing away of clothing is one of the biggest contributions we make to landfills today. We open up our closets; pick clothes that no longer need like a sweater, a ripped shirt, or some clothes that we just don’t want to keep any more. And where does it go? That’s right, to the garbage, and from there, to the landfill. Instead of throwing away these old clothes, make better use out of it by donating it to people in need or to Goodwill stores, or hold a garage sale. Another one of the fastest-growing types of waste is electronic, or e-waste. Old computers, televisions, and other electronic gadgets that don’t work are piling up in too many landfills. What’s worse, the components in some of those devices are made with some potentially dangerous chemicals. To dispose of electronics, first check with the manufacturer; some have store drop-off programs. And electronic stores sometimes have electronic recycling days. When it’s time to buy new furniture, don’t just haul the old stuff to the dump. Try selling it online. If nobody’s interested, either donate it to a charity or, at the very least, set it outside with a “free” sign on it. Getting rid of old furniture without dumping it doesn’t have to be a hassle, either. Some donation centers even offer pickup services for used furniture.
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Single Use Plastic Reducing the amount of single use items you purchase is the biggest change you can make.
Water Bottles - Buy a reusable water bottle to take with
you. Refill your bottle when you are on the go. Many public places have water fountains with bottle refilling stations. Buying a filter for your faucets at home if you have poor tap water quality allows you to refill at home too. By cutting out just one plastic water bottle a day, you can save 7.9 pounds of plastic from either being recycled or thrown away. It is estimated that it takes at least 450 years for a plastic water bottle to decompose in a landfill.
Plastic Bags at the Store - Bring your own reusable bags to
put your groceries in. If you don’t have a reusable bag most grocery stores have them to purchase the first time, then you can use it over and over anywhere you go. By replacing that one plastic bag a day with a reusable tote for the next year, you could keep 5.3 pounds of debris from going into a landfill. The estimated time to decompose for a plastic bag is about 1000 years.
Plastic Ware - If you’re in the habit of ordering lunch,
there’s a good possibility that whether you ask for it or not, you get plastic flatware. If you can use real utensils instead of disposable ones or buy reusable plastic picnic sets of tableware 5 times a week you could save yourself and the planet 2.7 pounds of plastic a year.
1
reusabe water bottle
=
167
plastic water bottles
1
cloth towel
=
7,300 paper towels
Paper Towels - This is another product that’s completely
unnecessary! Even though these items are easily replaced with cloth rags or sponges, the moment you buy these guys you can’t stop finding uses for them and before you know it the whole roll is gone. If you buy just one less roll of paper towels a week, you’ll reduce the amount of paper towel waste you create in a year by 15.7 pounds!
Drinking Straws - Either don’t use them or if you need
a straw get reusable straws like the stainless steel straws. Plastic straws, though small, make trash that’s completely unnecessary, and every ounce of trash created by a straw is entirely avoidable. By eliminating five straws a week you can keep more than one third of a pound of unwanted waste out of our landfills. It takes approximately 200 years for a straw to decompose if it makes it to a landfill and not into the stomach of a marine animal.
Disposable Coffee Cups - For most of us coffee is a part
of our daily morning ritual. By replacing a disposable 10 ounce cup (smaller than a Starbucks small) with a mug 5 days a week, in one year you’ll save 6.45 pounds of trash. Now here’s the crazy part: If you stop using the protective paper sleeve on top of replacing your paper cup you can save an additional 5.3 pounds of trash a year, for a grand total of 11.75 pounds!
Energy and Resources Reducing the energy and resources we use is also good for our environment.
Reduce Water - You can reduce the amount of water you
use by taking a shorter shower or even by just turning off the water while you are putting soap on your hair. You can save 10 gallons of water for every two minutes you shave off your shower time. When washing your hands or just rinsing dishes you can save water by turning the faucet on at a fraction of the volume. The average bathroom faucet flows at a rate of two gallons per minute. Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth in the morning and at night can save a whopping 8 gallons of water per day, according to the EPA. That’s 240 gallons of water every month!
Reduce Heat and Air Conditioner Energy - Reduce your
energy usage by closing your curtains when it’s sunny and hot outside blocking the heat before it has a chance to enter and warm the air will help keep the room comfortable and lessen the need for air conditioning. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), white-plastic curtain backing could reduce home heat intake by 33 percent. Opening the curtains when the sun is directly shining in the windows when it’s cold will help keep the room warm, lowering the need to run your heat. Close the curtains as soon as the sun has set to keep all the heat from escaping through the window. Closing curtains could save up to 10 percent in heat loss. Before you turn on a fan or air conditioning, try closing your shades when the sun is shining in to keep from getting hot, and open them in the winter to help warm your home.
Reduce Paper Waste -Through e-mail has rendered snail
mail almost obsolete, a lot of companies still mail out paper bills and advertisements. Eliminate one piece of mail a week by either switching to online billpay or removing yourself from a mailing list or two and in one year reduce your paper use by 1.15 lbs. You can pay a small fee at Stopthejunkmail.com and get off all those unwanted mailing lists. Instead of buying a new book, check it out from the library Post-it Notes: While these little guys are great for leaving yourself reminders, they’re pretty wasteful. Even worse, they’re rarely recycled (yes Post-its can be recycled!). By cutting your Post-it use by four packs a year, you can save almost a third of a pound of paper.
Reducing Light Energy - The next time you buy lightbulbs,
try CFLs. CFLs are the compact fluorescent light bulbs that look like soft-serve ice cream. LEDs are “light-emitting diodes.” The wasted heat generated by incandescent bulbs can increase your home cooling costs, as well as require you to pay more for lighting your home and yard or business. The electricity savings for a single Energy Star light bulb is about $6 per year and $40 for its lifetime, according to the EPA. Changing your indoor, outdoor, garage and business light bulbs to qualified Energy Star light bulbs can add up to substantial savings every year, in addition to helping the environment. An Energy Star light bulb replaces about six incandescent light bulbs because it lasts six times longer than the average light bulb.
= 6 incandescent light bulbs
1 CFL bulb
Reuse The second-best approach to reducing trash is to reuse, repurpose, upcycle, give away or freecycle things when they can no longer serve their original purpose. Anything that we can give a second or third life to will reduce the burden of trash upon the globe. Many items that we use on a regular basis and then discard when they are no longer needed or wanted can be reused by us or by someone else. When batteries are thrown away they end up in landfills. As the battery casing corrodes, chemicals leach into the soil and make their way into our water supply and eventually they reach the ocean. By swapping out your regular Lithium batteries for rechargeable ones you are keeping thousands out of landfills. Most rechargeable batteries can be recharged and reused up to 1,000 times. If you do have plastic grocery bags you can use them as trash can liners. When one ton of plastic bags are reused it is the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil saved. Plastic bags are non-biodegradable and they are made from petroleum products. Production of plastic takes 60-100 million barrels of oil from the world’s petroleum reserves. Therefore, plastic contributes significantly to the depletion of this valuable resource, making the prices of petroleum products rise every passing day. Instead of using styrofoam peanuts to pack materials, divert some of the newspaper from the recycle pile and crumple it up and use it as packing material. If you have packing peanuts they can be reused for craft projects for kids, filler for homemade dog beds or to refill or add to existing bean bag chairs to give them added fluff.
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Instead of buying brand new computers, electronics, power tools or household appliances, consider buying refurbished or slightly used items. They cost a lot less and you can help save them from being dumped in our landfills. An estimated 50 million tons of electronic waste are discharged each year. Most of these discarded computers are sent to landfills overseas in Africa, China, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines. There are entire regions in these countries that are polluted due to computer waste. Computers contain heavy metals like lead and toxic chemicals that pollute the soil and contaminate groundwater when they are dumped into landfills. Runoff from these landfills can contaminate water used for drinking and bathing, exposing people to dangerous chemicals.
50 million tons of electronic waste each year Before buying new furniture, consider repairing, refinishing or reupholstering what you have. If that’s not an option, donate it. Donating other useful working items like old computers, pots and pans, old jewelry, old cell phones, or any kind of appliance is a much better alternative to throwing them out. Remember that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Any household items that are even remotely usable or have some usable parts should be offered at yard sales, thrift stores, on free websites or at least put a free sign out by the curb. Keeping things out of the landfill as long as possible and getting as much use from it as you can is the ultimate goal.
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Recycle After you have Reduced the amount of waste you consume then you Reused everything that was reusable in some way you should have very little household waste that needs to be disposed of. Out of what remains you may be surprised at what can still be recycled before you throw it into the trash bin. Most Waste Management Companies offer recycling pick up in conjunction with regular trash pick up. If your area does not have this many cities have recycling stations that have large segregated recycling bins for public use. If everyone in America just did the traditional recycling we could reduce the amount of trash going to our landfills by 75%! However, there are a whole list of things that one would not expect would be recyclable. Here is a list of things you can recycle with a little effort.
Running Shoes - Tired, broken-down, running shoes are most
generally directed to the trash, but given our penchant for kicks, that’s a lot of sneakers stinking up the landfill. A better future for your athletic shoes is to introduce them to one of Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe recycling bins. Nike in turn will incorporate them into the raw material called Nike Grind, which is used in everything from running tracks to shoe soles to zippers.
Bras - There comes a time in every bra’s life when it just has to move on, and bras aren’t generally the kind of clothing we women toss in the “to donate” pile. But the Bosom Buddy Program, started by a textile recycling company in Arizona, wants your weary bras. After sprucing them up, they donate the revamped brassieres to women’s shelters or other programs that help women gain self sufficiency. 13
Milk Jugs & Other Plastic Containers - Containers used
for milk, shampoo, laundry detergent and household cleaners are lightweight and tough, but they usually are made from a different type of plastic than beverage bottles. When they are recycled they can make new bottles and containers, plastic lumber, picnic tables, lawn furniture, playground equipment, recycling bins and more.
Plastic Bags and Wraps - We use plastic bags to carry home
groceries. They keep our bread and other food fresh. They even let us carry goldfish home from the pet store. When they are recycled plastic bags and wraps can be made into plastic lumber that is used to make park benches, backyard decks and fences and even playground equipment.
Bottle Caps - Plastic caps on bottles help your soda stay
fizzy and keep out nasty stuff like bugs and dirt. Even though they’re made with a different type of plastic than the bottles, the caps should be put back on bottles before you toss them in recycling bins. Plastic bottle caps can be recycled into batteries for your car, garden rakes, storage containers, reusable shopping bags, yarn, ropes, brooms and more bottle caps.
Plastic bottles - Plastic bottles for soft drinks, juice and water are a handy way to conquer thirst and they don’t shatter if you drop them. When plastic bottles are recycled they can be made into lots of things: t-shirts, sweaters, fleece jackets, insulation for jackets and sleeping bags, carpeting and more bottles.
Recycling on the Web Bicycles - Americans send more than 15 million bicycles
out to pasture every year. But rather than throwing them in the dump, you can give your old two-wheelers a second life by donating them to Bikes of the World, which collects, refurbishes and donates bikes to lower-income people and select institutions in developing countries. https://www.bikesfortheworld.org/
Bike Tools and Gear - With a similar mission to Bikes of the
World, Bikes Not Bombs takes bicycle bits, pieces, and gear in addition to the bikes themselves. They accept parts, tools, broken components such as cracked frames, worn tires, tubes with holes, helmets, bags, lights, pumps, locks, cycle clothing, etc. They restore bikes and gear, and deliver them overseas to economic development projects in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Bikes that don’t get shipped often land in the group’s youth programs where teens learn bicycle safety and mechanic skills while earning bikes to keep for themselves. https://bikesnotbombs.org/
Crocs - Love them or hate them, the molded petroleum-based
foam shoes that seem best suited for emceeing a circus are here to stay; if not in fashion, at least in the environment, given the enduring material from which they are made. But the company that everyone loves to hate has done something good with the formation of Crocs Cares, which recycles used Crocs into new shoes and donates them to underprivileged families. https://www.soles4souls.org/
Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs - The mercury content makes CFLs a trickier disposal problem than basic bulbs, leaving many people confused about what to do with them once the light has been extinguished. But now both Ikea and Home Depot provide CFL recycling programs, and other lighting stores are also beginning to accept these bulbs as well. If neither of these chain stores are nearby, see 5 ways to dispose of old CFLs for other ideas. https://lampmaster.com/product-category/lamp-recycling/ cfl-recycling/ Brita water Filters - Ditching plastic water bottles for filtered water is a resourceful move, even if you are left with spent water filters. But if you use Brita products, you’re in luck. They have teamed up with the company Preserve, and between the two, they are recycling Brita plastic pitcher filter casings into Preserve’s eco-friendly, 100-percent recycled products such as toothbrushes, cups and cutting boards. Also cool: the activated carbon within the filters is regenerated for alternative use or converted into energy. https://www.brita.com/recycling-filters/
Cosmetics - Cosmetic packaging probably isn’t the first
thing that comes to mind when considering recycling, but compacts, tubs, tubes, and other containers can be easily recycled. Various companies have their own programs, including Origins and Aveda, to name a few. (You can also avoid packaging altogether by making your own.) https://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/03/30/originsrecycle-any-cosmetic-companys-packagingh/
Crayons - This may sound crazy, clearly crayons aren’t public enemy number one, but with 120,000 pounds of crayons produced each day in this country, the landfills could become surprisingly colorful. https://www.crayola.com/colorcycle.aspx/
What Plastic Can Become There are many things that you recycle that can be turned into other useful things. Here are a few examples of everyday items that, once recycled, can become a whole new thing to be used again.
To learn more about recycling and start your journey to change the planet visit: https://www.recyclebank.com/