8 Ways to Green Your Recycling
This story is part of Earth911’s “Green Eight” series, where we showcase eight ways to green your life in various areas.
Ideally, the act of recycling would be enough for you to rest easy. But here are eight ways to make your recycling efforts as eco-friendly as possible.
1. Change Your Recycling Perspective
Instead of asking, “What things around my house can I recycle?” try “What things CAN’T I recycle?” Putting bins at the curb is how your parents recycled. The new generation is recycling everything from computer monitors.
2. Know What You’re Recycling and Where to Recycle It
Driving around to five different recycling centers to find a home for your ferrous metals can easily be avoided with some research. Find out where to recycle almost anything using Earth 911. Driving 10 extra miles because you didn’t do your homework will negate the effects of recycling.
3. Recycle in Groups
If you’re dropping off recycling, you’ll need a car instead of relying on a bike or public transportation. But what if you and three friends all recycled on the same day with one car-load?
Another option to recycle in groups is to start a recycling program. This will cut down on your trips to the recycling center entirely.
4. Reuse Your Recycling Containers
Using plastic bags to carry your recyclables is great, but they only provide a one-time use. Instead, invest in storage bins that allow more content and can be used for numerous trips. Just make sure you keep the bins clean so you don’t attract bugs.
5. Pre-cycle When You Shop
Nearly everything you buy at the grocery store will come in some sort of container. The key to pre-cycling is finding products in containers that are easy to recycle or can be reused. The simple act of thinking more about packaging and buying accordingly can help to curb your waste output before you even purchase.
6. Start Green-cycling
What happens to all the waste you create while gardening? Some communities have yard waste pick-up service, but an alternative is creating your own recycling your Christmas tree or composting your autumn leaves.
7. Reuse Before You Recycle
Your plastic containers won’t be turned away if the writing has faded from a few trips through the microwave. Paper can be recycled no matter how many times it is written on. A little creativity can give many recyclables in your house a second life before they go to the curb.
8. Pass Along the Message
The current recycling rate in America is around 33 percent. By passing on some recycling knowledge, you can help raise that rate, and that is something worth talking about.
bravenewleaf
posted on February 26th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Excellent series of recommendations. Some additional ideas:
-If you have a family, make sure that you de-centralize your recycling systems. For example, if you have trash under your bathroom sinks, put a recycling bin/bucket there too. It will help your family maximize the amount of recycling you are doing.
-When you don’t know what to do with something, don’t throw it away! There are so many online programs that will accept items for reuse now. Freecycle, Swaptree, Goodwill – try all of these as options before you decide to trash something.
http://www.bravenewleaf.com
Green news, tips, and projects.
jezabelle23
posted on March 1st, 2008 at 10:52 am
These are great tips. I do most of them but I’m going to try the others. I work at an after school care program and these will be helpful things to teach my students on Earth Day in April.
8 Ways to Green Your Recycling
posted on June 17th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
[...] is recycling everything from batteries to motor oil to computer monitors. Run a search using Earth 911’s recycling locator to find a destination for these and other [...]
zenbeauty
posted on September 7th, 2008 at 12:39 am
How can I get the css and html for the "Find a Recycling or Re-Use Location search" box to post on website. I would love to have this on my website for my visitors. Please help me find out information on this.
Thanks so much.
Earth 911
posted on September 10th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
http://earth911.org/earth911com-recycling-locator-widget/
Any non-commercial sites can add the Earth911.com recycling search engine by downloading HTML code from this link.
viviane von oven
posted on January 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am
you should go international!!! i read you from bolivia, southamerica, and this kind of information, of places where to take garbage to recycle, for example, would be super useful for us too, specially if it’s also in spanish, accessible to many people here! congrats on this earth911 web!!!
Jennifer Thorn
posted on January 7th, 2009 at 11:21 am
This article totally inspired me. My husband and I drive our recyclables to a drop off place because my apartment complex doesn’t have pick up…but I think I will write a note to my neighbors and see if we can’t start a program amongst ourselves in the boiler room and take turns driving them in. We also used to use trash bags to transport our stuff but you’re right…that just creates waste so I think we’ll look for some bins at the thrift store.
On a different note. We have a baby and I have been fairly commited to using earth friendly diapers or cloth diapers. I find it really upsetting that all major grocery stores seem to have banded together and decided NOT to carry ANY earth friendly diapering options. I know diapers are one of the worst offenders when it comes to filling landfills. Any thoughts on how to do something about this? I’m starting to order mine online but I think it’s aweful that I have to create the waste that comes with shipping…and making an extra car trip to pick up my diapers is irritating and my home isn’t big enought to hide a secret storage of diapers for the year!
Suki Janssen
posted on January 8th, 2009 at 6:03 am
Another thought to “green” your recycling…
Know What You’re Recycling and properly prepare the material too
Instead of guessing, find out what exactly can be placed in your local recycling bins. Placing non-recyclables in your bins costs money and excess fuel for the trip to the recycling center, through the recycling on the conveyor belts (more fuel, time and money), landing in dumpsters bound for the landfill and finally loaded on trucks to be taken to the landfill (more fuel, time and money). Doesn’t make much “green” sense to place non-recyclables in the recycling bin.
Additionally, if you don’t take the time to breakdown old cardboard boxes at drop-off sites – trucks are pulling light loads of material from drop-off sites and dumpsters.
Tom
posted on January 23rd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
All good info, but missing the most important one – use less in the first place! Our society puts so much pressure on us to buy things that we really don’t need. Stop and ask yourself the question “do I really need this?” before making purchases.
By the way, did you know that the total amount of energy that most appliances will use in their life is less than the energy that went into manufacturing and shipping the same item? Resist the urge to have a second refrigerator or to replace the one you have just because it is out of style.
farhan,aly
posted on February 8th, 2009 at 5:43 am
my comment is :
Can ifind the ways of living to use only the items which are RECYCLING if not possible try to minimize
these items.
Many yeas ago the human’slife was so simle and they did not need to recycle their wastge.
Best Regards
aly
Recycle Raccoon
posted on February 25th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Trey – thanks for another great article! Sharing information on recycling is the only way more people will start to recycle. For people in the educational world (teachers, scout leaders, etc.) I would recommend calling your local Materials Recycling Facility. Many give educational tours and it is a very eye-opening experience to see the entire process in motion. Additionally, there are a lot of great ways to integrate recycling into the K-12 curriculum. A short list of lesson plans can be found at Waukesha County’s website: http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/EnvironmentalEd , but it is in no way comprehensive. Thanks again for awesome tips!
Traci
posted on March 7th, 2009 at 11:16 am
All great advice, except about plastics in the microwave. Heating many types of plastic will cause them to release bisphenol-a or pthlates, both known endocrine disrupters.
Gettingbetter
posted on April 28th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Great advice! But some ideas were clouded because of strange editing. For example, what does this mean?
“The key to pre-cycling is finding products in containers that are either Plastics get trickier.”
Raquel Fagan
posted on April 28th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Great point Gettingbetter! That line was a bit of an over site on our part. I have given it a little tune up and think its much better. Thanks for your feedback!
Donna Borghi
posted on May 17th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
HI My name is Donna,About 4yrs ago I was offered a job at a recycling company in the area which I live,I personallly didn’t have hands on with the products which went thru the yard…However I’m very much interested in doing whatever I can too help.As of this past jan.due too the econcony I was let go…But always called to see if their was anything I could do too help out cause I had so much time on my hands…in between looking for jobs and seeing what “us” as a whole need to do to change the way we dispose of recycled products.And watching the land the fills over filling…and just reading into how people should really see what we are doing to our enviroment.So in closing.please let me know what I can do too bring attention to my community how,and what we need to do…I’m far from shy..so let me have a hand somewhere…Thank you…Donna Borghi
THE VAMPIRE
posted on October 2nd, 2009 at 10:40 am
HEYY I LOVE REYCEING
Gwen
posted on October 15th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
This is a great point of recycling, but I go further than even Tom has in his post to the article. I think we should move past the point of recycling EXISTING resources as much as possible and move from this dated idea of recycling. Modern recycling, in my opinion is moving to the point of post-modernism recycling and using alternative resources that do the same job or an even better job that would use less energy to reuse, or to even biodegrade back into the natural eco-system totally. A goal of hopefully using energy sources that would sustain us with zero impact on the Earth. Studying at University in this field, a group of us student researchers have found that recycling existing products use or expend as much energy and cause a considerable amount of drain on the existing resources. So the question posed for modern day is: Shouldn’t we investigate methods that have been tried and true by pioneers in their fields of engineering and physics that prove different forms of energy can be used by masses with significant proof that these methods indeed work? Pioneers of these fields have been disrespected in the least and their work inventions in their respective fields have been masked by existing technology giants that want to keep their own energy resources and technologies in use to gain profits. N. Tesla, and V. Schauberger, have shown that renewable energy sources can be implemented and reused without causes significant drains on the resources we do have. Recycling existing sources of energy keeps the innovation of trying new alternative energy sources at bay, in my own opinion. Isn’t it time we all looked past being a mask for green living when true green living is living that embraces better quality living for all, making it also an economic gain for the people, and not for the companies who mask behind their veils of “green sustainability” and “recycling” motives.