From Guest Blogger Brooke Chaplan: Recycling Tips and Tricks for Everyday Use
Humans continue to throw things away and garbage continues to accumulate in landfills. With so much garbage and the fact that it takes tens, hundreds or thousands of years for some materials to break down, eventually that garbage is going to have nowhere to go. Reducing your consumption is the best way to reserve resources, but recycling definitely helps save the environment too.
Sharing is Caring
Share items with others instead of purchasing your own to use if possible. Consider renting items such as tools or getting used items from friends, family or resale shops that sell gently used items at affordable prices. Companies, like Main Street Fibers, know that recycling keeps these items out of landfills, making the benefits even greater. Recycling and reusing older items is worth the time to invest in.
Re-purpose Your Items
American culture often focuses on throwing things away and buying new ones when things break. This creates more garbage and is a waste of money. Repair toys, vehicles and electronics yourself or take them to a professional and you’ll probably get the item fixed cheaper than it would’ve been to just go out and buy a new one. Re-use items such as plastic bags from the grocery store, cardboard from paper towel or toilet paper rolls and shoe boxes. Get creative and you’ll be able to create something out of what would’ve just been Tuesday’s trash.
Create a Compost Pile
Compost piles reduce the amount of food in your garbage and also helps keep the stench down in your trash can. Create a pile in your backyard and put green cuttings from yard waste into it along with compostable kitchen waste. The materials will break down and go back into the soil. A small compost pile can turn into quite a large one that is able to break down other materials such as paper napkins and old newspapers.
Save Rainwater
If you live in an area that is currently experiencing drought-like conditions, it pays to re-use any rain water that you do get. Set up rain barrels and use the rainwater to water your garden or lawn instead of hooking up your garden hose.
Sign up for Curbside Recycling
Many times not recycling is related to lack of effort and having to deal with the hassle of taking recyclable items to a center. Your waste management program or trash company might offer recycling for free and you could be taking advantage of it, which also reduces the amount of garbage you produce and saves money.
Don’t think that recycling takes hours to do. A few minutes of your day makes a difference, and if everyone started making a bigger effort, those few minutes would add up to thousands of hours towards saving the environment.
You have made suggestions under “Re-purpose Your Items”.
I suggest contacting all the manufacturers who make items which cannot be economically repaired. All too often some minor part can fail and cannot be repaired or replaced. That can make it necessary to scrap an entire appliance. In fact, I had to replace an otherwise perfectly good washing machine because a pair on contacts in the timer failed.
Another time I had to scrap a microwave oven because it could not be repaired. I know enough about electronics to know that it could have been designed to make repair possible but there was insufficient incentive to do so.
I had to scrap a receiver because the sub-woofer output stopped working. The design of the receiver was such that it could not be repaired.
It is the MANUFACTURERS who are responsible for the fact that people scrap things instead of having them repaired. There is little that we consumers can to about it.