Many people and businesses are looking for green alternatives that will help them reduce their impact on the climate. One important element of being environmentally friendly is waste disposal. Instead of sending all your rubbish to the landfill, you can implement strategies that will help you to reduce your waste and dispose of it in a greener way.
There are five key points to keep in mind: reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, and rot.
If you do an audit of your household or company and put measures in place to improve the way you handle waste, you can not only help improve the environment, but you can also reduce your spending.
While all five of these green alternatives are important, each one has a time and place to be used. The best place to start is by trying to reduce your overall waste.
Then look for items that can be reused or repaired rather than thrown away. Items that aren’t viable for reuse should be recycled if possible. Finally, organic materials, such as paper, cardboard, and food waste can be used for composting (rot).
Reduce
Reducing the amount of waste you create is one of the best ways of lowering your carbon footprint. There is a laundry list of ways to reduce waste and many of these will be dependent on your household or business.
A few ways include: opting for bulk purchases that use less packaging, limiting the number of single-use items you consume, making smaller food portions or freezing leftovers, using reusable containers, and choosing cloth towels instead of paper towels.
Start small by choosing one area of your household or business at a time. For a household, the biggest areas of improvement to reduce waste will be in the kitchen and cleaning. Many of the other green alternatives below will also help reduce the overall amount of waste that is produced.
Reuse
Reusable items are unfortunately thrown away every day. A green alternative to throwing items out is to look for opportunities to reuse or repurpose.
Again, start small to not get overwhelmed, but look for opportunities for items to be reused or repurposed instead of tossed in the trash. In addition to reducing the amount of waste produced, reusing items can help you save money.
Old clothes can be donated or cut up and used as a replacement for paper towels, saving you hundreds of dollars a year. Egg cartons, to-go coffee cups, and cardboard toilet paper rolls can be used as starter pots for seeds. Jars can be used to store items or decorated as a vase to hold flowers. Plastic grocery bags can be reused as trash can bags for bathroom trash.
There are so many more items that can be reused or repurposed instead of buying new ones. A little effort goes a long way, for both the environment and your wallet.
Repair
Too often something gets damaged or broken and, instead of being fixed, gets tossed in the trash.
Taking the time to learn some basic DIY and fix-it skills be a great green alternative to contributing to the landfill and help you save money.
Why throw away a good shirt just because there’s a rip in the seam? Or spend hundreds of dollars on a new dresser just because it has some scratches?
You don’t have to be Martha Stewart, but nowadays there are so many resources available to help you learn some basic skills that can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, a year. Not only will you save money, but you can customize items exactly the way you want them to be.
Recycle
Recycling is a great green alternative for items that can’t be reused or repaired.
Items like old batteries, aluminum and other metals, glass, cardboard, paper, and plastic can be recycled at your local recycling center. If you’re unsure whether an item can be recycled, visit your county Solid Waste Authority for more information.
Some items, like paper, can be recycled at home. A fun project to do with kids, check out these step-by-step instructions to make your own paper, by Environmental Education for Kids! Paper and cardboard can also be used as fire starters for bonfires or fireplaces.
Rot (Compost)
The greenest of the green alternatives, composting gives back to the environment instead of hurting it.
Organic materials such as food scraps, paper, and cardboard can be composted, so they break down and turn back into the soil. Compost can then be used in the garden or for household plants as nutrient-dense soil.
Eggshells and coffee grounds are great fertilizers for indoor and outdoor plants and can be added to the soil as is. Vegetable scraps can be used to make broth before being added to the compost pile.
Chicken and beef scraps can also be used to make broth but be sure never to add these scraps to the compost file. Meat scraps should always be safely disposed of in the garbage.
Compost piles can be kept outdoors if you have the space, or inside bins, if you lack a large enough yard. A little research on the subject will do a long way.
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What to Expect
After you’ve taken the time to find green alternatives and practice reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, and rot the majority of your waste, you should be left with a few items that can be thrown away in the trash can and taken to the landfill.
This won’t be an overnight process. But over time, if you make a conscious effort, you’ll see your overall waste dwindling.
In addition to looking for opportunities to reduce waste, you can reuse or repurpose materials you already have and repair items when they wear out. Upcycling is trendy, and your entire household can be involved in the process. Once you’ve optimized waste reduction, you can compost organic material and recycle glass, paper, metal, and plastic items.
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