All is not lost though. You can do your part and solve this problem by recycling your food waste. By recycling your food waste you are create what is called compost. Compost is the end result of organic matter that decomposes.

Your food waste doesn’t simply sit in your kitchen and rot away, which wouldn’t be too pleasant, you actually do something with it and that is you bury it. I will get to more on that in a moment.

The first step is to get yourself a giant Tupperware bowl that, from now on, you can put your food scraps into. Everytime you have leftovers that would normally go into the garbage you redirect that food waste to your Tupperware bowl.

When the Tupperware bowl gets full you will bury it in your backyard. Dig a hole about one to two feet deep and empty the contents of the Tupperware bowl into the hole. Now cover the hole with the dirt. That is it you are now done. You have just recycled food waste.

Now comes the exciting part that you don’t actually see, but trust me it is happening. There is an entire ecosystem that lives underneath that top layer of soil. When you bury food they work hard decomposing that food and give back to you compost.

Compost is filled with nutrients and minerals that plants, trees, flowers, shrubs and any other type of plant require in order to grow and be healthy. By you burying your food waste you are reintroducing these nutrients back into your soil and at the same time recycling waste that would go to a landfill somewhere.

Just keep in mind not to bury food in the same spot sooner than 60 days. It will take about that time for the underlying ecosystem to decompose the waste thoroughly. Just pick a new spot and repeat. If space is limited you can dig a 3 foot hole, dump the waste in, then put a 2 to 3 inch layer of dirt on top, then when the Tupperware bowl is full again, you dump it on top of that, and then more dirt and so on until the hole is full. This helps use the same space more than once.

If you want to get even fancier when your space is limited, you can build what is called a compost bin or a worm box, put your food waste in there with some red worms and they will take care of the rest. When they are done eating the food you remove the compost that remains, mix it in with your soil around your flowers, trees and shrubs and keep doing it.

Someone once said garbage is just another product. It’s just that no one has found a use for garbage just yet. Well in this case you have. Pull double duty helping the environment by burying your food waste.

About the Author
Bruce is the co-author of the book “Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A guide to vegetable gardening for the rest of us”. It is a practical easy to follow book that teaches gardeners everything from composting techniques, aeration and frost conditions, to choosing the right tools and picking the right seeds. To learn more about Mr. Tucker or to inquire about the book you can visit: http://www.AveragePersonGardening.com.

One of the biggest landfill hogs is the waste of unrecyclable plastics. Not only do they take up a lot of space but they also take generations to decompose. Although a lot of supermarkets and shopping centers have made the switch to plastic bags that can be recycled, there is a better solution. Instead of using plastic bags of any kind make the switch to reusable cloth bags. My supermarket sells them for anywhere from one dollar to thirty dollars depending on the size, color and logos that are on them. I bought the bags that had the store logo on them and they cost me a dollar a piece. Inside each bag were loads of coupons, of which many I used so the bag basically paid for itself after one trip. Not only did I get the coupon but the store also gives me a nickel off for every bag I use. Sure it won’t make me rich, but it is something and a small incentive to make the switch. If every person in America made this change we would save over one billion plastic bags per year. That’s a whole lot of plastic!

Grass

I was shocked to hear that in most municipalities in this country that grass is thrown in with the regular trash which inevitably ends up in a landfill. In my area they pick up the grass on a separate day and it is recycled into compost and mulch. Of course you do not need to wait on your local, state or federal government to enact something similar. You can just as easily do it yourself. By switching your lawn mower’s blade to a mulching blade your grass will get cut up into very fine pieces and put back to the soil. When these fine pieces decompose they will introduce healthy nutrients back into your lawn. Even though my area picks up the grass, I use a mulching blade. My grass has far better benefits for me by mulching while I mow then having the government come pick it up. I haven’t “bagged” my own grass in nearly seven years! Imagine the landfill space we would save if everybody mulched their grass.

Plastic Milk Containers

Ok this one I have to give credit where credit is due and that is to my father who first introduced me to this technique and that is reusing one gall plastic milk containers before I recycle them. With this technique I get an extra use out of it in the form of a block of ice. After rinsing out the plastic container I then fill it up and place it in the freezer to create a huge block of ice. This is especially handy when I am having a barbecue and need to keep things cold outside. Once the water is frozen and I wish to use the block of ice, I simply take the container, run it under water for about 30 seconds so it will release from the sides. I then take a sharp knife or scissors and cut away the container. I toss then toss the container into my recycle bin and I am done. The plastic container ends up in recycle anyway so I mind as well use it for something before it goes.

As you can see none of these ideas are life altering or require you to make huge adjustments in your daily routine. But with over 300 million people making small changes like this on a daily basis we can reduce our needs for landfill space and the use of less plastic.

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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.

They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so why are you hoarding or throwing away treasure? You know what I am talking about, your basement full of crap that you will never use. Somebody somewhere has a need for the items that you are saving (and will never use) or throwing away. Post an ad on craigslist in the free section to get rid of it, post items up for sale on eBay, have a yard sale, donate them to a church, before you throw them away and they end up in a landfill, make sure someone else does not need them.

A big impact on the environment could be less use of plastic shopping bags. They take hundreds of years to decompose and invariably end up in a landfill somewhere and forgotten about. Do yourself and the environment a favor, switch to reusable clothe shopping bags. My supermarket sells them for ninety-nine cents, they come with about twenty dollars in coupon savings and they give me a nickel per bag for each bag I use when I go shopping. In other words I get that ninety-nine cents back very quickly. Since I started using clothe bags (about a year now), I have reduced my need of nearly 260 plastic bags. If everyone did that the savings from plastic bags would be into the millions if not billions.

My final idea to give you that I use is to switch your lawn mower blade to a mulching blade. It cost me about $20 and a half hour of my time but it was well worth it. A mulching blade cuts the grass into fine particles so you do not have to bag the grass, and put it out to the curb to get picked up. Your grass clippings will serve as great nutrients for your lawn and you will save a paper bag, trash pick up and landfill space. Not bad for twenty bucks! This investment pays for itself in less than half a season, maybe even sooner depending on how big your lawn is and how often you mow it.

As you can see none of these ideas is life altering. With a few minor adjustments to the way you do certain tasks, you can be well on your way to making a huge impact on the environment in no time.

The reality of the situation is for many solar panels are an investment just as much as they are doing the right thing to reduce carbon emissions from burning coal or oil to produce electric. With solar panels, just like any other type of investment, whether it is a business or a piece of real estate, there are steps you will want to take to make sure you get the most bang for your buck.

Before you even purchase a solar panel system you should take an energy audit of your own home. You should write down the amount of electric you are using on average during each month over the past three years. This is easy to do if you kept your electric bills. If not I am sure you can get a printout from your power company. You are looking for the number of Kilowatt hours (kWh) used each month to see which months you are using more electric. If you have electric heat chances are it will be the winter months if you live in a cold climate and if you are in a warm climate the hotter months due to running the AC.

Now that you know what you use and how much of it use and when you use, you need to know some things that will help reduce these costs before you even put one solar panel on your roof. For starters are you still using those incandescent light bulbs? If so switch to CFLs. They have become very affordable and also now come in a variety of styles that meet every need. Start with replacing the bulbs in the rooms you use the most, such as the family room, kitchen, etc. Make sure you read the package because for lights on dimmer switches and motion sensors you need to buy a CFL specifically designed for that purpose. The ideal solution would be to use LCD lights, but they are very and I mean very expensive, so they are not an option right now. But keep an eye on them for the near future.

Do you have trees planted on your property? More importantly do you have them planted in an area where they would block out the sun in the hotter months? Trees take a long time to grow but they are an investment that pays off in so many ways. They beautify the home and provide shade from the sun. In the colder months they block out the wind and if you buy a tree that produces fruit such as apples or pears they can also provide a food source. The choice of tree is obviously up to you but you should definitely plant a tree or two for all the reason mentioned above.

I can not tell you how many people I have met do not do the basic thing of putting window shades over their windows to block the sun in the warmer months. Even more importantly is the fact that any shading they do use is fairly inadequate. On the windows that get the most sun, use a thicker or darker shade usually around 12mm. It will block out a lot of the sun and keep the room and house in general cooler.

For under $300 you can install a solar powered attic vent fan. Nothing reduces the life of your roof and makes the house warmer in the summertime that hot air that is not moving in your attic space. Installing a solar attic vent fan is the way to go. You do not need to hire an electrician because there are no wires to hook up and there are no costs to run the fan since the sun is free (always has been, always will be). This is a great investment that will pay huge dividends.

These are just a few of the many ways you can save on energy long before you invest the money into an expensive solar panel project. Make sure you maximize all of the ways first so the return on your investment will be its greatest.