When you get right down to it, there are hundreds of ways to curb your waste. I’m going to present just a few today. Perhaps you are already doing these things – that is GREAT! Perhaps one will be a new idea that you can incorporate into your life – that is even BETTER! At any rate, my goal is to get you to THINK about how much waste goes through your home and how you might avoid some of it.
Packaging is my biggest bug-a-boo. Manufacturers seem intent on giving us as much packaging as possible. Buying in bulk will help to reduce that, as bulk items often use less packaging. Of course, recycling as much of the packaging as possible is a given. But why do these companies insist on packing things the way they do? I know things must be protected during shipping, but I think some packaging I have seen is way beyond the need. I purchase many personal use items from a company that is becoming more package aware. They recently took the toothpaste tube OUT of the box!
Doing away with paper products as much as possible is another way to curb the waste in your household. Paper plates and cups, paper napkins – all of these only get thrown into the trash. They can’t even be recycled because of the food on them. So, get out your dishes, your glasses, your cloth napkins, your cloth towels and USE THEM! Yes, you have to launder them, but I’m pretty sure they will just go in the washer with what you are already washing and will not create a new load of laundry. And running a full dishwasher is more efficient than standing at the sink with the water running while you wash a few dishes.
Does anyone in your family pack their lunch? We now have available a multitude of reusable containers for lunch packing. Invest in one’s that are a good size for what your family carries and then use them over and over and over again. You will save a fortune in throw away products and greatly reduce the items you send to the landfill. Why not throw in a smaller cloth napkin, too?
My mother was in to this long before it became popular – I’m sure it was to save money, though. I took my lunch in a brown bag. The sandwich and cookies were wrapped in wax paper (later those wax paper bags came out and were easier to use). Every day I would eat my lunch and then carefully fold everything and put it back in the brown bag and take it home. I used the same bag for a whole week. I was allowed to throw it out on Friday! That certainly reduced a lot of paper waste all those year’s I was in school.
Another way to reduce waste is to begin to deal with all of the paper that comes in your mail. First of all, anything that can be received online should. Sign up for automatic bill delivery from everyone that you pay. These are usually delivered in your e-mail so you can see them and pay them online. This saves so much in the use of paper as well as the cost of postage. These two sites give you lots of information on removing your name from about anything you could want (well, maybe not your creditors) 
http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/ and http://www.ecocycle.org/junkmail/index.cfm. Give them a try!
Many more ways exist to curb your waste. I’ll keep writing about them. Why not share your ideas by leaving a comment?
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
