Green Tips how to Reduce Home Waste and Recycle More

[ahtohg]

Below is an excerpt of a post - to see additional details at http://www.caelusgreenroom.com/2012/01/06/10-green-tips-how-to-reduce-home-waste-and-recycle-more/#sthash.GgHRr296.dpuf

What are your best tips?

In 2008, 222 million tons of waste will be generated by Americans. Americans’ total yearly waste would fill a convoy of garbage trucks long enough to wrap around the earth six times and reach halfway to the moon. That is not very green!

✔ Be aware of your ‘waste’ stream – Many people are unaware of their personal waste stream. Your waste stream is your personal contribution of waste that ends up in landfills. Every item you buy, unless recycled, will eventually end up in a landfill. The most significant materials (listed in order of volume) include paper, yard trimmings, food waste, plastic waste, metal waste, textile waste (including rubber and leather), glass and wood.

✔ Reduce the amount of garbage you create - The most effective way to reduce your waste stream is to reduce the amount of items you purchase. Before making a purchase, think about whether you really need that item. If it is not important, don’t get it.

✔ Pay attention to the packaging – Always try to find products that come with the minimum amount of packaging. Product packaging represents one of the most serious environmental problems of the modern consumers goods market. Often times, more resources and energy go into the packaging than the actual product itself. Once discarded, the packaging will need to be collected, transported, sorted, processed, stored, and either disposed of or recycled.

✔ Avoid buying disposable items

✔ Reuse items instead of throwing them away

✔ Recycle everything that you can

✔ Compost your biodegradable and organic waste

✔ Opt for recycled-content products

✔ Dispose of household hazardous waste properly

✔ Paper vs Plastic

[thecentristword]

1. Great tips

Never buy bottled water!!!!

[ahtohg]

2. Very good point

probably one of the most wasteful areas ever

[Curmudgeoness]

3. I think that being aware of your trash stream

is the most important thing. Once you really think about it, you will find hundreds of ways to reduce it.

I could do a dissertation on "reusing". Look at everything with an eye to reusing. I use plastic bags till they are useless. I use aluminum foil over and over....then I cut it up to sharpen scissors. I even save paper towels (that I use infrequently to begin with) that are lightly used and reuse them for big messes that I don't want to use rags on, because I will never get the rags clean---like oily or greasy messes. I even save the plastic bags and rubber bands that my newspaper delivery man uses and return them to him for reuse. The more you look at your trash, the more you find can be reused. It is a challenge.

[pengillian101]

5. I use aluminum foil over and over....then I cut it up to sharpen scissors

What a great idea! Just how do you do that? Just crumple it up and run across the blades? Or just cut through the sheets? I would love to be able to do this, so thanks.

[Curmudgeoness]

7. You just cut the sheet.

Sometimes, by the time I am ready to throw the foil away, it is more crumpled than a sheet, but it doesn't matter. I just cut it into pieces.

[Starboard Tack]

4. Take reusable shopping bags to the store

Buy produce loose, no plastic packaging and place in dedicated reusable bag. Same with granola. Buy coffee beans and grind at home or in store using paper bag.

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. My food waste is almost zero

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Egg shells get saved and crushed - make excellent fertilizer for gardens or lawn (calcium) - use coffee jars to save them in.

Leftovers, bones from poultry and meat get thrown in freezer, later to be boiled in crockpot soups/stews.

Small food waste like onion skins, banana peels, ends off tomatoes and such are thrown out in the garden,

off-season - are dried then saved for summer fertilizer - somewhere.

TV dinner trays (plastic) I reuse to make my OWN tv dinners from leftovers - works great!

And my own are tastier by the way.

Buy juices like 5-Alive in 2 litre containers - use small bottles for travelling, filled from the larger containers.

Reuse milk bags, as well as other bags until they are useless, get a hole in them - whatever, even reuse bread bags for freezing food.

Food that is not salvageable (like the bottom of a crockpot after 5 days) - I freeze it until garbage day -

no garbage stinks inside my home,

ever.

CC

[Curmudgeoness]

8. I like most of the suggestions you have

but I have found that using the lighter weight plastic bags to freeze food can cause freezer burn, which ruins food. I do reuse all the plastic bags that come into my house, mostly for that unsalvageable waste, cat litter, and other things that come out of the cat. But I do splurge and buy heavy duty freezer bags for freezing. I can wash and reuse them for so long that I rarely have to buy those bags. One box will last me years. I started doing this after one too many times eating freezer burned food. (Or maybe I just leave my foods frozen longer than you so???)

Why don't you have a compost pile or bin instead of drying those small veggie waste products in the winter? That sounds like it is time consuming and could be rather messy.

[ConcernedCanuk]

11. I only use the heavy milk bags for the freezer,

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they are as thick/strong as the freezer bags here.

I'll use the lighter ones to cover a leftover dish in the fridge, or a secondary wrap over top of the milk bag for the freezer.

Most of my veggie, and other organic waste DOES get composted - I actually have tomato plants growing out of my mini inside composts, and somehow - a sunflower - must have spilled a seed or two while filling my feeders on the counter - I brush counter spillage - bread crumbs whatever into my mini-composts.

CC

[shireen]

10. bone meal

I hate throwing out the bones after making stock. Then I read about how you can make bone meal by roasting the bones till they're brittle, then pounding them. So I tried it for the first time a few weeks ago with after-stock chicken bones. It was surprisingly easy. I baked the bones in the oven for a few hours on low heat (300F), on two occasions (simply because i didn't want to leave the oven on when i went to bed), till i detected a burning smell. After letting it cool off, I pounded it using a granite mortar and pestle -- a very sturdy one from an online Thai grocery store called Import Foods. Brittle bones broke up quite nicely. The only thing I'll do differently is be more careful about excluding meat and fat remnants. Even if it's cooked to a crisp, it leaves an oily residue.

I'm saving some pork rib bones for my next bonemeal session. Not sure how the harder bones will break up.

[ConcernedCanuk]

12. Good idea, on my to-do list now.

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Most of my bones, mostly chicken and pork, get reused in soups 2-3 times, digging and sucking as much of the marrow and juices out of the bones that I can.

NOW, I can get EVERYTHING from the bones.

Thanks for the nudge!



CC

[athena]

9. Switch to a plant-based diet.

It's amazing how much this reduces one's trash. It also makes cleanup a lot easier, since you don't have to deal with heavy grease.

Over a year ago, I read Plastic Free by Beth Terry. I was amazed to find out that most items one puts into a recycling bin don't actually get recycled. Even though I had been avoiding disposable bags for over a decade, I was able to make several small changes that greatly reduced my use of plastic. After that, we signed up for composting, which cut our trash volume in half. (I'm lucky to live in a town that provides composting services for a fee.) Finally, we switched to a plant-based diet, which meant that we were no longer throwing away those awful styrofoam trays that meat is sold in. We now produce so little trash that we only need trash pickup once a month. What's more, the trash isn't smelly, because it doesn't contain any food items.

[IrishAyes]

13. My single belated contribution to the list:

Keep a dog or two and then you'll never have leftover food to waste, and you'll always have a pressing need for plastic bags if you keep a tidy, hygienic yard. I used to have a Doggy Doolie but the JRT loves to dig too much. On the other hand, no moles or rabbits either.