Reduce reuse recycle
Recycling Tips, Substitute Reusable Items for Consumables
The 2nd R in the “Reduce, Reuse Recycle” Waste Hierarchy of Waste Management strategies “is Reuse.” This waste management strategy is easily achievable at home where domestic or household waste comprise of paper, food scraps, yard trimmings, plastic, metals, glass and others. Paper is 28.2% o and plastics 12.3% of total domestic waste. Reducing these numbers will be a big help to the waste management efforts and will be good for the environment. Here are some tips to substituting reusable items for consumables:
• Use rags, sponges, towels for wipe-ups and cleaning
Instead of using paper towels and other disposables for wipe-ups and cleaning, use rags, towels and sponges. Maintain a large supply of wash cloth and rags to ensure that you will have enough clean supply. In the end buying extra kitchen towels and wash cloths to build a supply will come out cheaper than regularly buying disposable substitute such as paper towels. Wash and dry the rags, sponges and towels as often as possible to ensure that no bacteria live on it.
• Substitute paper napkins with cloth napkins
There are inexpensive cloth napkins that you can buy for everyday use. Again, the initial cost of stocking up on cloth napkins will be offset when you lessen the frequency and ultimately stop buying paper napkins.
• Use a reusable shopping bag instead of plastic bags
When you shop bring your reusable shopping rather than have the grocery put them in plastic bags. Your reusable shopping bag can carry more weight than plastic bags, hold more items, protect bottles and glass jars better, will last you a longtime, will lessen trash and save energy and resources.
• Use plastic food container instead of plastic bags
Use plastic food container instead of plastic bags when storing food in the refrigerator and cupboard. They are reusable, last longer than plastic bags, leak free, keep out insects and lessen odor in the refrigerator.
• Use rechargeable batteries rather than disposable batteries
Rechargeable batteries can be used for almost anything, from flash lights to digicams. It will come out cheaper in the long run rather than buying disposable batteries every now and then and are better for the environment.
Advantages of Recycling
Advantages of Recycling
Reduce, reuse, recycle is the new mantra for the 21st Century. Even though the advantages of recycling have been long known, it is not until last few decades that it has become clear to almost everyone that if we are going to survive, we have to recycle.
Did you know that one and one-half acres of rainforest is destroyed every second? Most of it is used for timber, but significant amount of it is used for paper production. If you recycle one ton of paper, you have saved approximately 17 trees, about 7000 gallons of water and three cubic yards of landfill space. All that from just one ton of recycled paper. And that is average monthly paper consumption for a medium office. Imagine that on a large scale. Entire forests can be saved by simply altering our purchasing habit to recycled paper.
One other office item that can be recycled is a printer cartridge. In United States alone, about 700 000 cartridges are thrown away every year. Each time you buy a remanufactured printer cartridge, you have prevented about two and a half pounds of metal and plastic going to a land fill and saved about half a gallon of oil. If all cartridges in United State would be remanufactured it would mean 1.75 million of pounds less waste in our landfills and saving of 350 000 gallons of oil.
There re many examples like these all around us, and that is just considering the savings we can made. The impact on the environment is whole different ball game, as the effects of our behavior are already starting to hurt us. If we do not change our habits, the world we leave to our children will be drastically worst than the one we inherited from our parents.
