Recycling Tips & Resources
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 75% of our waste is recyclable. This is grand news, particularly because the American Forest and Paper Association states that 87% of the U.S. inhabitants, or 268 million people, have access to curb-side or recycling programs. The delay is a lot of people are [...]
If you have been looking for a way to deal with your ever growing household waste recycling trash bins, there are a few things you can do which will cut them down to a more reasonable size. Here are five simple steps anyone can take to reduce, reuse, and recycle their household and kitchen garbage:
The first step in any household to deal with excess household and kitchen trash is to look at the packaging all of your foods and other items come in. When you are at the grocery store, consider the packaging of items when you are deciding whether or not to buy something. If there is a comparable option with less packaging, then opt to purchase that item instead. This will reduce the amount of trash that ever enters your home.
The second step in eliminating all of the clutter and trash in your home is to sort your mail outside near your trash can or a shredder. I would estimate about 80% of the mail received in my home never enters my house. We tend to get a lot of junk mail and excess items which we will never look at or use. To help keep the clutter and trash at bay, I sort and open all of the mail near the outside trash and recycling container. Anything that does not absolutely need to come into the house is disposed of before it ever reaches the front door.
Once items are in your home, and have been used, look at ways to reuse them before they are either recycled or thrown in the trash. This can easily include washing out a Zip lock bag which was used for something other than meat products and reusing your plastic containers for your leftovers or lunch box. Look at each item you would normally throw away or recycle and see if it has another use for you first.
After an item is no longer of use to you investigate whether or not it can be recycled in your area. Take a quick visit to your local community recycling center and find out what items they will accept for recycling. Most local recycling centers will accept aluminum, plastics, glass and paper. Find out the specifics in your area and make sure to take all recyclable items to the recycling center.
Most kitchen waste can be easily composted. It is a myth that composting requires a large space and special expensive composting equipment. The easy way to start composting is to find a kitchen compost container. Your compost container can be something as simple as an old margarine tub or as fancy as a stainless steel compost pail. Place all unused foods into your compost container, except for meat products. Meat products will attract flies and other unwanted pests to your compost pile! Into your compost bucket you will place vegetable and fruit trimmings, coffee grounds, coffee filters and any bread products. Each day simply take your compost container out and dump it in a pile in your yard. Turn over the pile occasionally and you will have an amazing quality soil to use in your garden and around your plants.
I hope these five steps help you to think about ways that you can reduce, reuse and recycle in your own home. If everyone does their part the world will be a much better place to live.Recycling Bins
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Recycling Services | Recycling Center
Service and Charity Organizations Can Use Recycling
Services to Make Extra Money…
Service and charity organizations are always looking for new and unique ways to raise money. Fundraising is a necessary evil of any organization as funds are always needed to do the work and keep it running. One of the single best ways you can raise some cash is by holding a recycling drive.
Recycle it services are widely available in most areas of the U.S. today. However, many households do not take advantage of the services which they offer. Sometimes people just do not know these services exist, in other cases they just simply do not understand how they work. By holding a recycle it drive your organization can accomplish three goals at once. These goals are: helping the environment, teaching local community members about the services available in your area, and raising money for your group. This makes a recycling drive a win-win-win situation!
To hold a recycling drive your group will need a few supplies. The first of these supplies will be some flyers to announce your event. You will want to let as many people in your community know about your event as possible.
One way to insure that the largest amount of people hear about your event is to print up flyers and ask each member of your organization to post them where ever they go within the community.
The best advertising you can have for your event is a notice in your local newspaper. It is always worth a quick call to your local newspapers to see if they are willing to post an ad about your event for free or very low cost. Some areas this is possible, and in other areas it isn’t. However, you have nothing to loose by simply calling up your local newspaper publishers and asking.
After your advertising plan is in place, you will want to contact your local recycling center. You need to find out what materials they will pay your organization for and how they would like to receive the materials. (Tip: Put this information on your flyers!) You may be able to talk the center into donating all payments for a certain period of time to your organization. This is nice because then you can ask people to go directly to the center at a certain time on a certain date. This frees up members and does not require them to do a lot of hands-on work.
If you will need to collect the recycling materials on your own, then you will want to have some recycling containers readily available for your participants. You will need a container specifically for aluminum cans. (Tip: Ask your community to crush their cans for you so they will take up less space.) You will need recycling containers for plastics, glass, and paper as well. Which containers you will need depends on what materials your local recycle center will accept, and their size depends on the size of your event.
By holding a recycle it drive your service or charity organization can raise some much needed money and keep recyclable materials out of your local landfill as well. Recycling Services | Recycling Center
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