The average family of four in West Virginia produces 3.3 tons of garbage per year! The Fresh Kills landfill in New York City was closed because of a pending lawsuit due to its size and the ensuing air pollution. With an overwhelming fact like that, you can see why it’s so important to reduce our waste.
In cutting back on what ends up in our landfills, we protect our land, conserve resources, and save money. So take a look at the links on the left and check out the simple, easy things you could do to make a huge difference for yourself and the planet.
reduce the amount of unsolicited credit card and insurance mailings at the OptOutPrescreen website
keep your car, mower, appliances, power tools, etc. in good working order through regular repair and maintenance
compost
Reducing is the most important and, often times, simplest way to cut back on the waste you produce as well as saving money. By reducing the amount you buy, you’ll need to deal with much less waste. In buying in bulk, you reduce the amount of packaging you need to throw out and, often times, save a lot of money in the long run.
Americans go through 100 billion plastic bags annually, only a fraction of which are recycled. Try bringing your own bags to the store.
Reuse basically means any activity that lengthens the life of an item. This can be accomplished through the purchase of durable products that don't need constant replacement. Selling and shopping at flea markets and yard sells extends the life of perfectly good items that could wind up in local landfills. Donations to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and other charitable organizations help out on many different levels. At home, maintenance and repair are good examples of reuse. Finally reuse boosts the local economy. How? Remember that most new products are produced out of state and often in foreign factories while repair, maintenance, reselling, and donations or by, through, and for local people and small businesses.
The Salvation Army and Goodwill are two of the largest chains of consignment store, both of which donate their proceeds to charity.
Recycling, the act of taking old, used products and using their materials to make new products, is a vitally important industry to the act of conserving resources. In using these old materials, not only do you cut back on the new materials needed, you also cut back on the enormous amount of energy needed to process these materials.
Annually, we use enough plastic to wrap over the entire state of Texas.
Recycling aluminum uses only 5% of the energy required to process new aluminum.