Start Recycling at Home

Did you know that of all wastes generated by Americans every day, only about 30 percent was recycled? The rest goes to the landfills – or unpermitted landfills for that matter – and some of them are burnt in the burnt barrels. So why don't we as individuals encourage better environment by starting the recycling process at home? No, we don't need to do the whole turning plastic bottles into plastic chair. It's not that complicated. But we can do simpler things like reusing plastic materials at home as far as they can be reused or placing and sorting different kinds of wastes in separate containers.

Use less plastic things than you normally do

Avoid using throwaway plastic eateries as much as you can. According to cleanair.org, Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks and spoons to circle the equator 300 times per year. This is strengthened with the fact that most American office workers use about 500 disposable coffee cups annually. And we haven't even counted the other plastic things, including plastic bags that make up the second most common things to fill the landfills.

The point is we need to start using less plastic things so that we don't contribute more damage to the environment. If you work in an office, take a glass cup or two from home that you can keep at the office. This way you won't have to use the coffee plastic cups anymore. It doesn't take more than a minute to wash your glass coffee cup every day. In exchange of the plastic shopping bags, why don't you bring your own shopping bags every time you go out shopping? There are some cute, foldable shopping bags that can fit in the ladies' small purse that you can obtain easily. Have one of these and carry it with you wherever you go. Then start saying no at the register of some shops when they offer you a plastic bag to contain your shopped goods.

Reuse the plastic stuffs as far as you can reuse them

Pretty sure you have plastic containers at home. They can be in the forms of food containers, square pails, 5 gallon buckets or even plastic drums. Try to reuse these as much as you can as they allow. Food containers can be reused to contain foods (don't mix the dedicated food containers with other things; once you use a food grade container to store non-food materials, you cannot use it to contain food anymore). The square pails and the 5 gallon buckets can be reused in so many different ways at home, at the office, in the garden or at the camp site. They can even be used creatively as gift baskets! So try as much as you can to reuse these plastic containers.

Recycle – sort organic and inorganic materials at home

This is the way that makes the recycling process much easier. It's when everyone participates in recycling as early and simply as sorting the organic and inorganic wastes at home.  It's really very easy to do. You just need to have two kinds of waste bins covered by waste bags. You can dedicate your square buckets or 5 gallon pails for this. Label the containers with their own respective "ORGANIC" and "INORGANIC" labels. Then for every rubbish you are about to throw away, put it in the right labeled containers. Food wastes, vegetable wastes, non-veg wastes, kitchen wastes etc. should be put in the organic trash bin. This can be turned into manures later on. Inorganic wastes such as napkins, plastic bottles, plastic bags, metals etc. should go into the inorganic trash bin. Contact the city recycling center in your area to have this bag of inorganic wastes picked up so that they can turn them into something useful. Perhaps a new plastic kid chairs or tables.

By doing this at home (and make the whole household participate in the home recycling program), not only will you contribute in saving the environment, you will also educate your children to live responsibly. Hopefully this will be passed on through many generations.