Recycling: Ideas You Can Start Using Today

A solar panel system can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, a wind turbine takes up too much room and your budget is already stretched to the hilt. So what can one do to do their part in cleaning up the environment? The answer is simple. You can recycle.

Recycling is more than just separating your trash into bins and waiting around for the right company to come and get it from your curb. Recycling is a process by which stuff you no longer need or use can be reused by someone or something else for a specific purpose.

For example, there are companies out there that recycle old tires. But they don’t recycle them into new tires, no, they melt them down and use the left over material as a road paving compound, or they mix it with gypsum for drywall and a whole slew of other things. Of course that is on the larger scale of solutions. We want to talk about the smaller scale such as a friend of mine who takes old wooden pallets and turns them into outdoor furniture. He obviously has a skill in woodworking, but he has been able to translate that skill into a business that also recycles. These are the ideas we will touch on here today.

Do you use aluminum foil? Of course you do, unless you don’t cook or store anything in the refrigerator or freezer. Aluminum foil is one of those products that can easily be recycled and people do not realize it. From now on do not throw your aluminum foil away. Instead wash it clean just like you would a dish, flatten the foil out and save it for a later day. Obviously if it is savable you would do this. You can easily save yourself two to four rolls every year. Imagine if every family in America did this? With 300 million families and growing, you can see the immense savings and impact on the environment.

A birthday is a happy time (or at least it should be). Most of the time you get to spend it with family and friends. A huge waste is the wrapping paper to cover the gifts. Sure it looks nice, but in a matter of seconds you quickly have a big pile of paper that ends up in the trash. Here is a better solution. Wrap your gifts in the comics section of the newspaper. The mere word comics can be associated with being happy which birthdays are. You save on wrapping paper, the comic section can be recycled by the gift recipient, and everyone (including the environment) is happy.