How to Save the Environment - Recycling, Reusing, Composting

Guanacaste Tree in Costa Rica

Eco Tips for Green Living

Saving the environment can be challenging; however, do not give up and go green. Here you'll
find tips for environmentally friendly and responsible green living, composting tips, and
information about recycling.

Meanwhile, we know the family of Béa Johnson well. With their Zero Waste Home, they seem
to be the environmental angels. An other example of the trend is a whole city. It is San Francisco
with its successful Zero Waste program.

So, let's do the best we can; let's save us in our green environment.
This Angel will Save the Environment

Many Ways to Help the Environment

 Most importantly, be friendly to one another. Appreciate and respect your fellow creatures
great and small and all the resources around you.
 Commute to your working place. Use public transportation.
 Walking is fun.
 Don't buy bin liners or other garbage bags. Reuse the bags you receive in the grocery store as a
bin liner for your trash..
 Biodegradable plastic bags are better than the usual plastic bags. However, they are not ideal
because of energy levels needed to produce them.
 You will use less plastic bags when you reuse them. Deposit some of them in a canvas tote
hanging on your doorknob, so that you can not forget them while going shopping.
Nature is All Around Us

Some More Eco-Ideas

 To use less plastic bags, go shopping with a plastic container in the trunk of your car. You can
buy a portable folding plastic case, use a clothes basket, or similar box for this purpose.
 Do not litter plastic packaging in the landscape. Dispose it properly in a trash.
 Do not buy storage containers. Use used packages for storage, like glass containers and plastic
boxes from yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, whipped cream etc. They are fantastic storage
utensils, and I use the plastic containers even in the freezer. Small glass containers are also great
to keep tiny tools in them, and higher glass containers are excellent for elongated utensils like
pencils and pens.
 Do not buy yogurt in small plastic containers; this is waste. Buy yogurt in bigger ones and use
them for storage.
 Consider to follow family of Béa Johnson from Zero Waste Home, and bring empty glasses with
you while shopping. These glasses would substitute wrappings and plastic packaging for
products such as meat, fish, or cheese.
 Do you own an unwanted item? Do you want to buy something? Consider first, contacting a
swapping group of [Link] near you.
 Consider not to throw things away; fix and reuse them.
 Think about using starch based and biodegradable foam peanuts also known as packing
peanuts.
 Do not toss hazardous waste in the drain or landfill. For more information go to the pages of the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
 Used computers, phones, monitors, printers, washing machines, etc. - dispose your redundant
electronic or electrical items safely. Find an IT recycling company near you or contact your local
waste management office, donate it to a charity or give them back to the manufacturer. There
are many ways to recycle your used items; however, IT waste shouldn't be dumped in any
landfill. Electric or electronic waste is hazardous garbage and contains such poisons like lead,
dioxins, cadmium, radioactive isotopes, chromium, and mercury.
 Every non-rechargeable battery you use is hazardous waste. Buy preferably rechargeable ones
and dispose the non-rechargeable batteries in drop off centres. In Europe, many supermarkets
collect used batteries. For more information you can also visit [Link]. Call2Recycle is,
since 1996, the only free rechargeable battery and cell phone collection program in North
America.
 Reject tiny pieces of candy wrapped individually. Sometimes small portions of candy are
packaged in three or four different wrappers. Do not waste your money buying waste.
 Try to get milk in bottles. Buy milk in bottles, and return the empty bottles back for store credit.
In Europe, it is a tradition to do so.
 If possible, buy drinking water in reusable glass containers. You can also use tap water (mostly
we have clean and drinkable tap water!) in your own bottles. This is less expensive choice. If you
are not sure how secure your tap water is, you may use special filters to clean it additionally
(Britta Filters or alike); you may also ask your water provider about the quality of drinking water
in your area.
 To reduce waste in your house, leave the bulky carton boxes in the store. This is also a European
tradition; they leave very often packages immediately in the store. For example, they take the
cereal, but leave the cereal boxes as waste in the store. Every supermarket does have trash
containers in front of each store. There, you can dump all the boxes you do not need at home.
This is rubbish, and possibly the manufacturers will learn to produce less waste when customers
will abandon the oversized unnecessary packages.
 Think about eating less meat and consuming it only occasionally and consciously. The carbon
dioxide emission from the meat production is apparently higher than the total emissions of all
vehicles.
 When you own a garden, use it for herbs and vegetable cultivation. It is beneficial, satisfying,
and environmentally correct to grow your own food.
 Buy vegetables, preferably in their harvest season, and use locally grown food to avoid high-
shipping costs and to save on greenhouse energy costs.
 Do not waste food! Do not buy too much food, and then do not throw it away! Use it, if you
can't use it, give it away, but do not waste it! Buy less, weigh less, waste less, spend less, and
have more money in your pocket. Reuse your leftovers before they go bad. Almost 50 % of
produced food worldwide lands as in waste landfill! This is scandalous. Check for inspiration the
internet pages of Love Food Hate Waste, and click, for example, on England or other part of the
UK (this page comes from the UK).
 Reuse egg-cartons for storage of small items.
 Decorate such used egg-cartons, other storage boxes, or empty of their contents glass
containers. You can paint or decorate them. I know that you have an imagination and that you
are creative. Use these gifts to make your life beautiful in yellowish-greenish-blue colors with
some spots of red...:-)
 For your drawer-dividers use shoe-boxes.
 Use old hanging shoe organizers for storage of small items in your garage, basement or storage
space.
 Use compost, a natural fertilizer, in your garden. If you do not have a garden, use community
compost near you. Having a compost pile in the garden is clean, odorless and free of pests. You
can compost leftovers of not cooked vegetables, fruit scraps, shredded leaves and weeds, grass
clippings, egg shells, coffee filters, tea bags, used kitchen towels and facial tissues. You cannot
compost meat leftovers, dairy products, and cooked-food leftovers.
 Do not try to print everything. Try an external hard drive, memory stick, or Google Cloud for
storage. CDs and DVDs are the second-best option for storing purposes.
 Dry your clothes outside or indoor on a folding rack. Don't use your electric dryer all the time.
 Try not to use cosmetics based on petroleum. Check the pages of Skin Deep
[Link].
 Go organic! Pesticides are not acceptable for you. An example, they cause even lower IQ in
newborn babies!
 Please, reuse plastic or paper cups. Even Starbucks has realized its influence on saving the
environment. They encourage their customers to order coffee in their own (brought into the
store) cups; this is a brilliant idea. Okay, you must clean your cup, but at the same time, you will
avoid to pollute the environment with unnecessary waste.
 Use plastic spoons, knives, forks, and plates only when you clean and reuse them.
 Stop receiving junk mail. Here, you will find more information [Link] or
[Link]/junk/mail/.
 Consider not to buy products from distant countries because of the energy used for their
shipping.
 Take few one-side printed pages of paper (it can be from your unwanted mail or other sources),
fold in half and cut, fold again in half and cut. Join the new, smaller pages with the stapler in one
corner and use as a notebook.
 Green plants naturally purify the air and increase oxygen in your home; have as many plants
around you as you like :-)
 Don't smoke :-)
Water the Source of Life

Let's Save Water

Do you have any dripping tap in your home? Repair it.

 If you have a garden, capture rain water in a container and use it for watering plants.
 Mulch around the plants in your garden is able to hold moisture in the soil for longer.
 Don't cut your grass in the garden too short. Higher grass means roots grow deeper and more
moisture stays conserved in the soil.
 Place a brick in the toilet tank; you'll use less water while flushing.
 Don't clean dishes under running water.
 To save water, take shorter showers.
 Turn off water while brushing your teeth, soaping your hands or body.
 Boiling just enough water for your coffee or tea saves energy and water.
 Check your house for a hidden water leak. Read your water meter, and after few hours of not
using water at all (for example because you weren't at home), read your water meter again. If
the water meter reads exactly the same, there is no hidden leak in your home.
 Commercial car-wash that recycles water is much eco-friendly than car wash at home where the
waste water contaminates the soil and ends up in rivers, lakes and the oceans.
 Install water-saving showerhead.
 Don't clean your driveway with water. Use broom instead. If its too dusty, sprinkle a little with
water and brush the dirt away. In this way you would use much less water.
SAVE THE
ENVIRON
MENT