Archive for the ‘Recycle’ Category

Teaching our children to be good stewards of their planet should start at home, but since our children spend a good portion of their day inside a school building it is smart to continue the lesson there.

The move towards greening our schools is gaining ground despite budget cuts and other priorities. Starting with the foundation that the buildings that are occupied by the nations children and their educators “should protect occupant health, provide a productive learning environment, connect students to the natural world, increase average daily attendance, reduce operating costs, improve teacher satisfaction and retention, and reduce overall impact to the environment.” (Green Global USA)

An example of how some school districts are taking this to heart comes from an article I read in the Natural Awakenings magazine that talked about Green Schools in Flagger Co. Florida. Flagger Co. charter schools are doing a good job of implementing these principles. They started a three year project to “Go Green” by sticking to five basic principles.

• A Toxic free setting: by providing an environment for students and teachers that uses no toxic pesticides, no lead-based products, uses building materials that maintain healthy indoor air quality and no building characteristics that would produce mold.
• Using resources sustainably: Energy efficiency, water conservation, and green building design for new construction or remodeling. Green School supplies made of recycled materials.
• Create Green Healthy Outdoor Spaces: Such as non-toxic materials used to build or remodel school yards and gardens.
• Farm to school Organic produce: An initiative to help local farmers and provide students with a mineral rich whole foods menu, void of junk-food, fast food and sodas.
• Engaging the students in the whole “Go Green” process: Uses the project as a learning model for teaching students the dynamics of social and economic change.

Wouldn’t it be great if all schools would take this approach.

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INFORM is an environmentally conscious group “dedicated to educating the public about the effects of human activity on the environment and public health. Our goal is to empower citizens, businesses and government to adopt practices and policies that willsustain our planet for future generations.”

INFORM has put together a series of videos called the “Secret Life Series” that remind us about the life cycle of products that we use everyday and how the choices we make can affect the outcome of the impact these products have on our environment and our health.

Take a look:

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• A fun way to spend an afternoon with kids or friends is to put together a mosaic. Never throw away chipped plates or glasses, save them up and when you have enough make a mosaic out of them, make it a party.
• Need a use for old cinder blocks? Make a garden bench out of them, stack them up 2 high and wide enough for 2 people to sit in, line them up against a wall and top with a foam cushion and pillows lined with scrap pieces of fabric.

• Take an old door that is not being used, spiff it up with some sanding and fresh paint and hang it horizontally behind a bed as a headboard.
• Have some old PVC pipe hanging around, get some elbows and T’s (they’re cheap at the hardware store), play with the design and come up with some functional items for the garden. Make a coffee table, a gardening stool, if you have a lot and are adventurous maybe a chair.
• Take old cast iron garden furniture that you don’t like out there anymore, and bring it in the house. Cut it into pieces that can lay flat and hang it as wall art, or hang it from the ceiling.
• Old book cases or any scrap wood can always be turned into something else. One idea is to cut the wood into strips and turn it into frames, place some inexpensive molding on it and save yourself a whole lot of money.
• Old switch plates can be painted and reused as frames also. Cut a piece of sturdy cardboard with the same dimensions as the switch plate. Attach your picture centered on the piece of cardboard and then hot glue the cardboard to the switch plate.
• Empty wine or beer or any kind of bottle can be used as a flower vase. Just gather some favorite magazine pictures or you favorite wall paper and decoupage it onto the bottle making it now a decorative piece that can be enjoyed.

You get the message, use your imagination before throwing anything out. See what other uses you can find for those objects. Keep looking back for more ideas and please add you ideas in the comments.

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Finally we are getting some rain. Oh, I know some parts of the country are getting way more than they need but for those of us in parts of the country where rain is scarce, we welcome every drop.

It’s time to think about how to capture this precious water any way we can, so that we can reuse it and disperse it in our gardens when the rain is not so forthcoming. The best way to do this I found is to use a Rain Barrel. I found this really attractive one over at the Garden Supermart, it has a Crown Planter that allows you to put a plant on top for a more attractive look than an average planter, it comes in two versions a 50 gal one and a 65 gallon one, with a spigot at the bottom, a connector with shut-off valve and a 6′ garden hose. Many more tips on Living Green can be found at the Garden Supermart.

Another way to save water during the rainy season is to have a rain sensor on your sprinkler system. So many times do I see sprinklers going on in the middle of a rain shower, what a waste. If you are not home to monitor when your sprinklers go off, a rain sensor will do that for you, so you don’t have to watch water and money go down the drain.

Collected rain water can not only be used for watering plants but also for washing driveways, cars, walkways, dogs, gardening tools. Use your imagination and I am sure you can come up with many other uses recycling rain water.

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This Earth Day Live Lighter, Live Happier.

This spring in honor of Earth Month, why not adopt some new habits to help to lighten your impact on the environment?Try our tips to cut down on your paper, plastic and water consumption - we promise you won’t miss it. Plus, you’ll do a world of good!

Celebrate National Reusable Bag Day with Earth Share on April 21!
Help Earth Share and Earthwise Bag Company promote the use of reusable bags in honor of the second annual National Reusable Bag Day!Many grocery stores have implemented bag recycling programs, but transportation of these bags to and from stores requires valuable resources. And 99% of the 100 billion plastic shopping bags used in the U.S. are never recycled, with a single bag taking up to 1,000 years to fully break down. What can you do?
Bring your own cloth or fabric bags when you shop! If you grocery shop once a week, in five years you’ll have kept about 250 to 1,000 grocery bags out of our landfills. When one ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil is saved! Look for Earthwise reusable bags in more than 2,000 retail locations across the country throughout the month of April - your purchase of these bags will help support Earth Share. Learn more: www.reusablebagday.org
Re-use the plastic bags you already have: - Old bags make great in-car trash containers. - Use them as shoe protectors in the garden. - Re-use them to clean up kitty litter, or to pick up dog droppings when walking your pet. - Use them in your smaller waste bins around the house. - Fill a few with shredded paper and tie them off for cheap, reusable packing materials. They’re also a handy way to maintain the shape of your favorite tote. - Cut a slit in your bags and use them to protect clothes from dust, moths, and other pests. - Take them with you for easy disposal of diapers.

Don’t Wallow in Water Waste
	Try implementing these handy water-related energy tips at home. These quick fixes take little to no time at all!In the shower - If you have to mix your hot water with cold, your thermostat is up too high and you are wasting energy. Why heat up water just to cool it down? Simply adjust the thermostat in your water heater to your perfect temperature. In the washing machine - Using cold water instead of warm cuts down on energy use by 90%! In fact, using cold water is often better for your clothes.
In the bottle - Buy a water filter and drink water from the tap in a reusable bottle — that’s where 40 percent of all bottled water comes from anyway. The average American drinks 22.6 gallons of bottled water a year. Making all that plastic releases over four pounds of carbon dioxide per person and consumes a surprising amount of petroleum (.005 barrels, or nearly a quart of oil per person).

 

Organic & ‘Eco-Chic’ Gifts for Mother’s Day or Any Day!
			Tulips bring lasting joy to that special someone! Reflecting the vibrancy of nature, our tulips are also certified organic. With each purchase of any tulip bouquet Organic Bouquet will include a FREE vase plus give a 10% donation to Earth Share when you visit through this link: www.organicbouquet.com/earthsharetulips Rarity within Reach.Renaissance Diamonds offers a beautiful and earth-friendly alternative to traditionally mined diamonds and is a proud supporter of Earth Share! Find out about jewelry made with lab-grown Gemesis Cultured DiamondsTM. www.earthshare.org/marketplace.html

Earth Share, a federation of America’s leading non-profit environmental and conservation charities, promotes environmental education and charitable giving in workplace employee giving campaigns. For more tips and to find out how your workplace can help the earth, visit www.earthshare.org or call 1.800.875.3863″

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I was watching today a show on the DIY channel called From Junky to Funky. What they do on the show is find what some would consider junk and repurpose those items into something useful. Like in the picture above from MyGreenGarden.ca What a great idea to recycle old items and wouldn’t it be great if we all did that, it would sure keep a lot out of the landfill. So this is the first of the Junky To Funky Series and we will start in the garden.

When you think about redesigning your Garden, start with the 3R’s of the environment. Reduce/Reuse/Recycle. Go around the house, the garden and all the sheds you have and look at everything with a fresh eye. Look at all the “stuff” you have and ponder what you could use it for that maybe it was not designed for.

• An old pile of bricks, could be turned into a new patio/dining area or maybe a path.
• An extra piece of wood fencing could be turned into a table top.
• Old chipped flower pots that are no longer pleasing to the eye, could still be used as planters, but bury them in the ground instead for easy planting and removal of annuals.
• Old pressure treated fence posts could be used to mark the perimeter of planting beds, or used as steps in an incline.
• Old Patio furniture can be revamped with new Garden Furniture Cushions and a little paint.
• Old wrought iron fencing can be used as a trellis to train vines or as decoration on an outside wall.
• Old tires can be reused as planters.
• Turn an old hose into a soaker hose, simply use a whole punch to punch wholes in it at different intervals, lay it in a planting bed around the flowers, then turn the water on, on a timer.
• Broken up concrete can be used as stepping stones.
• If you hand your clothes out to dry, use an old bleach bottle with a handle and cut a big opening opposite the handle. Place your clips in there and before you put up your line, thread the line through the handle of the bottle , and now you have the clips handy as you are hanging the laundry.
• Another use for used plastic water bottles, is to cut the bottoms off, leave the cap off and bury upside down next to water thirsty plants, that way the water goes straight to their roots and you wont need to water so often.
• Spare wood can be turned into bird houses.
• Hang an old mirror on the side of a shed, it will give the garden a new perspective.
• Old paint cans can be decorated,, filled with sand and used for keeping your small gardening tools in so that they don’t get rusty.
• Create a Compost bin out of some old wood, anything organic can be thrown into the compost pile.
• Save old sheets for those freezing winter nights to protect you more delicate plants.
• An old wooden ladder can be used to decorate the side of a raised planting bed or hung up on a wall for architectural interest.
• Large pieces of broken colored glass can be used as a rain chain. Just wrap thin wire around the glass at different intervals then hang from a corner of the house of shed. Don’t forget to put something under it to collect the rain.
• Use old wine barrels to collect rain.

Put your noodle to work and you will find uses for all those old things, and make your garden more interesting to look at while helping out the environment at the same time.

If you have any other ideas please share them with us, in the comments…

http://www.customcushions.net/chair.aspx

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Everyone loves to spend time outside and living green. And when our experience is in line with nature, it is all the more enjoyable. Even in our own little haven, our garden, we must conduct ourselves in a way that preserves and reduces any impact we have on our resources and our little environment.

When gardening , the predominant thought should be, if it didn’t come from the earth, it shouldn’t be going in the earth. In other words, pesticides and fertilizers are really poison to the earth and the ground water. They are manufactured chemicals that, yes, might make your grass greener or makes those pesky pests go away, but what are they doing to the earth under your feet and do you realize that all those chemicals eventually end up in the ground water.

The same goes for the hardscapes that we use in our gardens. Using products that have a minimal effect on the environment, like Sunbrella Outdoor Cushions on your patio furniture, choosing the right decking that uses recycled materials, and finding different uses for objects that would otherwise end up in the landfill is important.

Here are some steps we can all take to get closer to Living Green in our Garden:

• Reduce the area that you use for a lawn, lawns are water hogs.
• Plant more native and drought tolerant plants.
• Collect rain water.
• Learn to Compost, and use that to enrich and fertilize your soil.
• Use Mulch to help maintain moisture in your plant beds.
• Group plants together with the same water needs.
• Learn about using Beneficial Insects, instead of Pesticides
• Put old objects to new uses in the garden.
• Remember the 3R’s, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, also apply to gardening.
• Use recycled and environmentally materials in your hardscapes.

http://www.cushion.com/

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Composting is not only a great way to fertilize your garden, save money by making your own natural fertilizer, but most importantly you are keeping all this stuff out of the landfills, which is becoming a problem in cities all over. It is in our best interest to learn how to composts, it’s part of the Three R’s of recycling.

If you are an avid gardener you understand the value of composting. But most of us regular folks who just dabble in gardening once a week, haven’t taken the time to fully understand what composting can add to the environment and keep away from the landfills.

Here are some of the benefits of composting:

• Using composting helps improve the structure, texture and aeration of soil, and helps in improving water retention in the soil.
  • Clay Soil : If you have Clay soil you know very well how hard it is to handle. It’s is extremely hard soil composting can help break up clay soil.
  • Sandy Soil: With sandy soil you know that the water just slips through, composting can help retain some of that water.
• Composting provides food for the microorganisms which help keep soil healthy and balanced.
• Nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus are produced by composting which eliminates the need to be adding other amendments to the soil, especially keeping out chemicals.
• Almost any organic material is food for the compost pile.
• Easy, just takes a little time investment.

For more information on how to start your own composting bin check out these resources:

• Compost Guide: A complete guide to composting
• U.S. EPA- Basic Information on Composting

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Start when they are small and you will create good recyclers. Teach them the three R’s of the Environment. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… and our world will be the better for it…

1. Start a recycling program at pre-school or grade school with the participation of the school.
2. At home: Make Garbage/Recycling day a fun Family thing to do.
3. Find ways to recycle old things into new things, make projects out of them.
   • Recycle plastic bags into crotchet projects: Check out Myrecycledbags.com
   • Go around the house and discover things that are not being used and re-purpose them, and make a contest out of it. Who can find the most things to re-purpose.
4. Create a poster illustrating the recycling symbols and post it in the garage or wherever you keep your recycles and make it a game with rewards for the kids, to see who knows the symbols best.
5. Create art day at the house, challenge the kids to make art out of something old instead of throwing it away.
6. As a fundraising project for school, collect old cell phones with the kids and then sell them to a reseller. Check out : Greenphone
7. Next time you buy new electronics, start a neighborhood Recycle Your Electronics Drive. Check myGreenElectronics they can help you find an electronics recyclers in your area.
8. Have them count how many paper towels are used in a day at home, challenge them to find ways to reduce the consumption.
9. Start a compost bin in the garden, teach them the benefits of composting. Here’s a Composting Guide
10. Start a new Habit: “Cross the door, Flick the Switch” Meaning if your leaving the room, turn off the lights…

Waste not, want not…(grandma)
For more ideas: Green To Do List

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And the winner is Reusable Bags… Have you ever put any thought into the implications of your answer? Now you may say to yourself, what’s the big deal, its just a couple of bags. But the big deal is that millions of bags, paper and worst yet, plastic bags end up in the landfill and rivers and oceans . Not to mention the natural resources that are being wasted in order to make these bags that will more than likely be used only once. Let’s look at the statistic: (source WallStreet Journal/ SFGate)

• A family of four in the US goes through 1500 plastic bags a year
• All together we discard 100 Billion plastic shopping bags in a year
• Less than 1% being recycled
• Plastic bags can take up to 1000 years to decompose
• 490,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million non-degradable plastic bags
• 4-5 trillion Plastic Bags used Worldwide
• Making paper bags consumes millions of trees and it actually takes more energy to make paper bags than plastic.

Now some cities have started to do something about this problem, by just simply banning the use of plastic bags altogether. San Francisco and Oakland in California, were the first cities in the US to do this, and now a dozen other cities are planning the same. Internationally, Taiwan has banned both the use of plastic bags and plastic utensils. Here’s a list of cities and countries that have already banned the use of plastic bags or are planning a ban. (source: cbsnews.com)

• IN THE UNITED STATES

Cities that have adopted a plastic bag ban:

• Oakland
• San Francisco

Cities Considering action on plastic bags:

• Annapolis, Md.
• Austin, Texas
• Baltimore
• Berkeley, Calif.
• Boston
• Fairfax, Calif.
• Maui, Hawaii
• Malibu, Calif.
• New Haven, Conn.
• Portland, Ore.
• Phoenix
• San Jose, Calif.
• Santa Cruz, Calif.
• Santa Monica, Calif.
• Seattle

• INTERNATIONALLY

Countries that have adopted a plastic bag ban:

• Bangladesh
• China
• Rwanda
• Taiwan
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Zanzibar

Cities or countries considering action on plastic ban:

• Australia
• Singapore
• London

What about “Reusable Bags” as the first option?

No it’s not a new idea, it’s an old idea, we just went away from it because we became a society of convenience. But it is still a very practical, and a very “good for the environment” idea.

If you pay attention, all the business are jumping on the bandwagon of selling reusable shopping bags. Everybody has them, from your local supermarket, to Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ikea, and other smaller companies that have taken off with the idea of reusable shopping bags and put a twist on it like Chico Bag, who makes them small enough to fit in your purse or glove compartment. Or people like Cyndi at MyRecycledBags.com who takes the time and effort to recycle those plastic bags and turn them into something beautiful and useful. On her site she also teaches people the Craft of making Bags out of recycled materials.

Plastic bags have been around for about 25 years. Which means that our mothers and grandmothers can still remember going shopping, with their own Reusable Bags. If they could do it, I think so can we…

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As the old adage goes, one person’s junk is another’s treasure. You can turn your junk into a valuable commodity by “recycling” it in innovative and useful ways:

Share appliances with your neighbors. How often do you really use that steam carpet cleaner, shop vac, leaf or snow blower, circular saw or sewing machine? Chances are, many of your household appliances lie dormant until that time once or twice a year you pull them out for some special project. Why not start an appliance sharing program with some of your neighbors? You’ll save money, stretch scarce storage space and promote good will. Hold a yard sale. You’ll find plenty of relics that need a good home (yours not being one of them). Invite neighbors to bring along their vintage items, make it a community event and get ready to barter the day away! Give proceeds to your favorite charity or buy tree saplings to plant in your yard. Donate to your local non-profit thrift shop. Someone, somewhere will always find use for what you no longer need or want. Many local governments have created partnerships with Good Will, the Salvation Army, Purple Heart and other charities that encourage community residents to bag their donated goods and leave them for easy pick-up.   Earth Share, a federation of America’s leading non-profit environmental and conservation charities, promotes environmental education and charitable giving in employee workplace campaigns. For more tips or to find out how your workplace can help the earth, visit the “Get Involved” section of our website, or call (800) 875-3863.

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What happens to all this High Tech Trash? Or as it is now known, E-Waste.

According to an article in Nat Geo, in the US the estimate is that 70-80% of Computers, Monitors and TV’s end up in the landfill every year. According to the the EPA 30-40 million PC’s will be ready for the dumpster in each of the next few years, and 98 million US Cell Phones were discarded out in 2005 and the trend will probably continue.

The main problem with this is not that we are running out of room in our landfills but that these products carry “Not Healthy ” amounts of Heavy Metals such as: Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, Mercury, and Beryllium, and when they end up in the ground, they leech into the ground water, then back to us through the drinking water or our food.

Makes you wonder why Cancer has become the epidemic it is…

The following is a list of the long term effects of exposure to these metals:

• ARSENIC: Long term exposure to arsenic and its compounds can cause cancer. Inhalation can result in lung cancer. If swallowed, cancer is likely to develop in the bladder, kidneys, liver, and lungs. In large doses, arsenic and its compounds can cause death.
• CADMIUM: The effects of extensive cadmium exposure is not known, but are thought to include heart and kidney disease, high blood pressure, and cancer.
• LEAD: The lead in a person’s body can build up. This kind of lead poisoning can lead to nerve damage and problems with the gastrointestinal system (stomach and intestines). Over a long period of time, these children often suffer brain damage.
• MERCURY: Problems can include inflammation of the mouth and gums; loosening of the teeth; damage to the kidneys and muscles; shaking of the arms and legs; and depression, nervousness, and personality changes.
• BERYLLIUM: Chronic effects include diseases of the respiratory system (throat and lungs), such as bronchitis and lung cancer.

RECYCLE YOUR ELECTRONICS:

• There’s an easy way to recycle we just need to get on board. Collect your no longer used electronics, and make a drop off every six months. Make it a recycling project with friends or the whole neighborhood.
• The Consumer Electronics Assoc. created, mygreenelectronics.co to help you find a recycling resource in your area. It also provides a list of Eco-friendly electronics.

When you find the company that takes care of E-Waste in your area, ask them what they do with it. Taking it to a Recycler doesn’t guaranty that they will safely dispose of the E-Waste. Often times they sell the lots to E-waste Exporters that send the waste to developing countries where the labor is cheaper and the laws on disposal are not as strict. But that’s for another story. Make sure your Recycler is a responsible Recycler, if you’re not sure take it somewhere else.

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On Monday January 21st, the World Future Energy Summit was be held in Abu Dhabi, at which time the plan for Masdar City, the greenest city on earth was unveiled.

Masdar City will be the first carbon-neutral, waste-free, car-free city.

The city will consist of six-square kilometers (2.3 sq miles), that will eventually house about 50,000 residents and 1500 businesses. They will start construction in the first quarter of 2008, and will take approximately 10 years to complete, although it’s firsts residents will be able to move in by 2009.

No Pollution, No Waste… Now how will they accomplish this you ask? Here’s a list:

• ZERO CARBON: 100 per cent of energy supplied by renewable energy – Photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, wind, waste to energy and other technologies
• ZERO WASTE: 99 per cent diversion of waste from landfill (includes waste reduction measures, re-use of waste wherever possible, recycling, composting, waste to energy)
• SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT: Zero carbon emissions from transport within the city; implementation of measures to reduce the carbon cost of journeys to the city boundaries (through facilitating and encouraging the use of public transport, vehicle sharing, supporting low emissions vehicle initiatives)
• SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS: Specifying high recycled materials content within building products; tracking and encouraging the reduction of embodied energy within materials and throughout the construction process; specifying the use of sustainable materials such as Forest Stewardship Council certified timber, bamboo and other products
• SUSTAINABLE FOOD: Retail outlets to meet targets for supplying organic food and sustainable and or fair trade products
• SUSTAINABLE WATER: Per capita water consumption to be at least 50 per cent less than the national average; all waste water to be re-used
• HABITATS AND WILDLIFE: All valuable species to be conserved or relocated with positive mitigation targets
  
• CULTURE AND HERITAGE: Architecture to integrate local values.
• EQUITY AND FAIR TRADE: Fair wages and working conditions for all workers (including construction) as defined by international labour standards
• HEALTH AND HAPPINESS: Facilities and events for every demographic group
  

Source: The Masdar Initiative

C/Net News.com: Masdar City…

abu dhabi masdar city the greenist city on earth World Future Energy Summit

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On October the 15th, a fellow blogger, Cindy from MyRecycledBags.Com put forth a great idea as her action post. The idea is to Craft with recycled materials. I want to share this with you because she has many great ideas of crafts that can be made with a myriad of recycled materials, using plastic bags, bread bags, VCR tape, cassette tapes, old denim, and other recycled fabric to craft with.

Check out her post: Crafting with Recycled Materials

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Think about all the paperwork that is involved with your finances. If you didn’t have all this paperwork to go through and check and double check you might have more time to make your money grow and help the environment at the same time. You’ll get rid of a lot of clutter in your house and spend less time shredding and filing. You’ll have more room in your recycle bin too.

Find ways to go paperless:

• Bank statements: If you participate in On-Line banking already, why not have all your accounts go paperless. Most banks have that as choice for you in the On-line banking menu. It will save the banks money too and maybe they’ll stop Nickle and Diming us to death. (unlikely, but worth a try)
• Brokerage statements: As with the banks, the brokerage houses are more often than not on-line now, so ask your broker to stop sending you statements. You can access the same information on-line and you can always print something out that you have to have in black and white.
• ATM receipts: The ATM machine always asks you if you want a receipt. JUST SAY NO! you can always go home and check the transaction on-line.
• Yearly Reports: Again, this information is available on-line if you really want read it. Let’s face it most of us barely get through the summary, all we want to know is is our stock/mutual fund doing well, the rest is just too technical.
• Credit card Statements: Also available on-line along with ability to pay your bill, so why bother waiting for your bill to come in the mail, when you get the bill the information is old already. On-line you can get up to the minute info on your credit card usage.
• Utility Bills: most Utility companies and also City Utilities are going on-line. Same as with the credit card companies you can access your bill, pay it, look at usage, add or turn off services. You can even save on phone calls and do your business with them on-line.
• Mortgage Statements: On-line you can get info on your balance, payment, escrow account payouts, customer service.

I remember when computers started becoming common household fixtures, the “word” was that we would become a paperless society. But, it hasn’t happened yet. We seem to have an addiction to paper, as if, if it is not in black and white then it’s not real.

But let’s really examine what we actually do with all this paper. Why we save it.

1. If we’re organized: we’ve thought about going paperless, but we think we are going to need it someday, so we file it, then we shred it six months or a year later. And it ends up in the recycle bin or the trash heap.
2. If we are not organized: we haven’t even thought about going paperless, so we leave it laying around till one day we get tired of looking at it, or the pile just get’s too big . And it ends up in the recycle bin or the trash heap.

Either way we all know where that paper will end up, wouldn’t it be easier if we just didn’t have all that paper to deal with?

GO PAPERLESS!!!

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Did You Know?

• It takes seven gallons of oil to produce one tire. Five gallons of butadiene and styrene gasoline comprises the substances that tires are made out of, and two gallons of gas are used to generate the energy needed to manufacture the tires.

• Dumping waste tires in non-designated areas is hazardous to our health and to our natural habitat, AND it is against the law.

• An estimated 250 million waste tires are discarded every year.

• If you and your parents perform certain tire maintenance steps such as rotation, inflation, balance, and alignment, you can extend tire life and decrease waste tire generation by 15 percent.

• It is important to recycle your tires because improper disposal/illegal dumping can result in fires that are difficult to extinguish. When tire piles catch fire, the melted rubber generates oil that can pollute surface and groundwater. Furthermore, tire piles tend to collect water creating a perfect breeding space for disease carrying animals such as mosquitoes, snakes, and rats.
• 

How are they recycled, and what are they made into?

In the USA, reusing or recycling tires keeps them out of landfills. When buying new tires, leave your old ones with the dealer. Many communities have designated recycling drop-off centers where you can safely and responsibly dispose of your tires.

The majority of recycled waste tires are used as a source of energy, otherwise known as tire-derived fuel or TDF. When heated in combustion facilities, most notably in cement kilns, pulp and paper mill boilers, and power utility boilers, energy is produced and used as fuel to power these facilities.

Waste tires can also be used to make many useful objects. When all non-rubber material is removed from the tires, rubber chips are left over to make crumb-rubber modified asphalt, which is used to pave highways. Waste tires can also be made into doormats, water hoses, shoe soles, door stoppers, playground and athletic surfaces, non-slip products, sheet rubber for manufacturing products, and artificial reefs for marine life habitats.

Read More: Source of Information: Seminole County/Recycle Tires

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Have you ever noticed how much trash is created by all the packaging that comes with every new item we buy. Have you noticed how many things we throw away that could be otherwise used.

• Buy items in bulk from loose bins when possible to reduce the packaging wasted.
• Maintain and repair durable products instead of buying new ones.
• Buy products that you can reuse.
• Avoid products with several layers of packaging when only one is sufficient. About 33 of what we throw away is packaging.
• Check reports for products that are easily repaired and have low breakdown rates.
• Reuse items like bags and containers when possible.
• Use cloth napkins instead of paper ones.
• Use reusable plates and utensils instead of disposable ones.
• Use reusable containers to store food instead of aluminum foil and cling wrap.
• Shop with a canvas bag instead of using paper and plastic bags.
• Buy rechargeable batteries for devices used frequently.
• Reuse packaging cartons and shipping materials. Old newspapers make great packaging material.
• Compost your vegetable scraps.
• Buy used furniture (sometimes called Antiques)- there is a surplus of it, and it is much cheaper than new furniture.

Use the 3rs of the Environment: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

conservation recycle reuse/reduce/Recycle

bibi

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