Best Ways to Recycle Our Garbage


Since issues regarding gasoline, water, and beef take up most of the air waves in regards to environmental issues, it can be easy to forget that plain old trash can cause just as many problem.  Plastic water bottles, milk jugs, soda cans, paper trash of all sorts, peanut butter jars and more all have to end up somewhere.  Since landfills and dumps aren't getting much smaller, it might be time to have a little conversation on what you can do about your trash.

While everyone always talks about recycling, there two other R words that are just as useful; reuse and reduce.  Here are some ideas of how you can make all three works for you.

Reduce: The easiest one to understand but the hardest to master, reduce involves exactly what it sounds like it does; doing your best to make sure you use fewer resources.  This means purchasing as few goods as you can manage and making sure what you do purchase contains the least amount of packaging.  While reducing your waste usually refers to the garbage you personally produce, keep in mind there are other ways to reduce waste in the world.  Choosing better goods that are locally made reduces the amount of gasoline and air pollution created by the transportation and industry.

Reuse:  Reusing your goods is finding things that could be thrown away, and than finding additional uses for them.  Turning margarine containers into a food storage system, bring your own bags at the supermarket, and turning toilet paper rolls into arts and crafts are all great ways to get extra mileage out of what would otherwise just sit in a waste can.  Some people practically turn the modification of trash into an art form, and make useful tools in the process.  By using old bread tabs to fix flip-flops, making dustpans out of old milk jugs, and turning empty CD spindles into a device that keeps doughnuts and bagels fresh?  Clever and imaginative people have found new uses for things that we would previously thrown away without a second thought.  That's saving the planet twice; once by keeping trash out of the dumps, and one by eliminating the need to purchase something else.

Recycle:  This is the one that people know the best.  You turn over things made of plastic, paper, glass, and aluminum to a facility.  That facility processes the various forms of trash, sorts it, and turns it over to a company that breaks these materials down to a more workable form.  Thus, they have new aluminum, glass, and plastic that can be used in new products.  With recycling, we can reduce the need to burden the planet by eliminating the need for new, raw materials and save some money in the process.  While you should definitely separate your recyclable good and hand them off to such a company, there are more ways to recycle than that.  Compost allows you to enrich the soil around your home with foodstuff, table scraps, and leftovers.  Even something as humble as coffee grounds has new life when thrown into your garden.  
