The concept of recycling is still a novel idea for many. It’s probably the easiest step to take to reduce the amount of waste sent to local landfills. In our community, trash is picked up twice a week. It means that over 100 times a year a garbage truck (which probably doesn’t get the greatest gas mileage) swings by our house to pick up our trash. Nice convenience or just a huge waste (pardon the pun)?
We are currently placing our trash curbside on average once a week through some minor changes we’ve made with a goal to only have to put out trash once every two weeks. If you are trying to reduce your trash each week, here are steps we’ve taken to do so for the average week:
1. Curbside recycling. Our curbside service takes aluminum, tin, paper, and most types of plastic.
2. Recycle everything else you can. We currently take our glass and a few other items to a local recycling center.
3. Paperboard, you’re next. All of those cereal boxes and pretty much anything else on the “inside” aisles at the grocery store are recyclable. It’s just that most curbside services don’t take them. We have some room for improvement on this one.
4. Compost! All vegetable and fruit waste now makes its way to our homemade compost bin (that’s a future post). We eat our fair share of fruits and veggies, so those rinds, peels, and anything else now go back into our yard…eventually.
If you have handy, simple tips on how you’ve reduced your trash output, please comment!
