It’s no surprise that as the holidays are ending we find ourselves in position of a lot of, well, stuff. New clothes, new cookware, plastic odds and ends, and all the boxes the “stuff” came in. If your house doesn’t look like an episode of Hoarders the day after Christmas then maybe you should be writing this.
The problem, after taking inventory of your new cardboard kingdom, is what to do with everything. Some of it will surely be used, earning a spot in your closet or cabinets. The rest of it will either be put away in storage or thrown away. However storage won’t be an option for everything. You can only stuff so many inflatable Santas in your shed before things start to overflow, and throwing these things away comes with a whole host of other problems for the environmentally conscious.
Recycling is something that most people, in some back corner of their mind, acknowledge as the responsible and beneficial thing to do. Unfortunately, this is the same part of the brain that says other responsible things like, “You should go running in the morning”, and “You really shouldn’t eat that third piece of cheesecake”, the part of the brain that we like to ignore.
Recycling as an option is easy to ignore. If you live in an area without recycling pickup services, as many do, then it becomes just another chore when you can simply throw anything away in a trash bag. Out of sight, out of mind, out of your house. No judgment there. Some people realistically don’t have the time or the means to make a trip to the nearest recycling center, nor do they want trash building up and cluttering their home.
The good news, finally getting to the point, is that supporting the recycling movement can consist of more than just taking care of your waste. Even if your schedule does’t permit adding another chore, there are still plenty of things you can do to help the environment. Some of these can even help your budget as well.
One of the most important things you can do is to buy items made from recycled materials whenever possible. This helps on a number of levels. For starters, by purchasing recycled goods, you’re decreasing the demand of goods made from fresh materials, meaning that less of them will be taking up resources on a regular basis. And hey, if that means that prices drop a little bit, then you’ll thank yourself when your favorite recycled goods aren’t available and you’re “forced” to buy name brand. And in a perfect world, adopting this buyer mindset also shows producers that recycled goods are in demand and thus more companies will look at that as an option.
A quick note on purchasing: Make sure that when you’re placing an item in your cart that it says that it is actually made from recycled goods and isn’t just able to be recycled. Otherwise you’re still consuming materials rather than continuing a recycling process.
There are plenty of other things you can do around the home if changing your buying plan doesn’t appeal to you. With a little know-how and some tools, you can alter the way your water is set up to preserve usage. You can force your plumbing to use rainwater or gray water (the leftovers from your shower) to flush the toilet. There is some immediate gratification in this in the sense that your water bill will decrease, even if it’s just a little bit. This is something you can do entirely for selfish reasons that will benefit the environment in the long run. You can find attachments to your system that will take care of this for you. We’ll talk about the installation for this in a future post.
Another popular option is composting, which gained “cool status” sometime along with the hipster movement. Composting consists of taking all of your green waste, such as vegetable cuttings, and placing them in a bin. As things break down it creates what is essentially a conditioner for the soil. This is a great activity if you have a garden. Even if you don’t, it’s still a perfect way to prevent food odors from piling up in your kitchen. You can use your compost heap for more materials than you might think. Properly maintained, you can drop in waste such as old newspapers and cardboard as well, as long as they aren’t overly treated with chemicals. Check the brand and chemicals used before adding them to the pile. If things start to smell a little bit, maybe because of one too many leftover red peppers, you can add garden soil to cover the smell and help break everything down.
With maybe the exception of the plumbing project, all of these are simple tasks you can easily incorporate into your schedule to benefit the environment. Seriously, composting is really just making an outdoor trashcan. Even taking the time to shift your plumbing provides benefits after an hour or so of work. Take care of it on a Saturday and save water without any effort after that. Even if you’re still determined to throw away your soda cans, there’s still plenty you can do to reduce your impact on the earth.
Keep your eye out for future posts where we’ll go more in depth on changing your home’s plumbing, and setting up a composting site in your backyard.
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