The 3 R’s of Recycling: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
The 4 R’s of Recycling: REFUSE, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
What’s the difference? If we REFUSE more items – items with ridiculous, unnecessary packaging, countless plastic bags, items we can’t recycle in our city, then we eliminate wasted energy going through the process of having to recycle something or sending it to landfill. Why do you need to use disposable razors? Our grandparents survived without them – you can too.
To: San Francisco, California
Why? For becoming the first city in North America to ban the use of plastic bags in grocery stores and drug stores.
To: Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, Canada, population 550
Why? For becoming the first municipality in Canada to ban plastic shopping bags.
To: Dublin, Ireland
Why? For charging 15 cents per bag in all stores thus discouraging plastic bag usage while shopping.
To: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Why? For finally beginning to accept the plastic bag problem and making grocery stores charge 5 cents per bag in the hopes of discouraging their use (commencing 2009). Here’s hoping this is only the first small step of many.
Brita – Brita North America is finally on board to recycle its filters! According to the company, it will be doing so in 2009 (this program is already in affect in other parts of the world). Check the website for more information.
HP - Recycle your ink cartridges.
Many stores and associations in your local area have programs for this but if you can’t find one locally, HP offers postage paid envelopes for you to return your empty HP ink cartridge to the companyfor recycling.
Ikea – Recycles your old light bulbs and batteries. In Canada, as of July 1, 2009 will no longer offer plastic bags in its stores but offers many recycled bag options for purchase.
Whole Foods Market - Whole Foods is the first US supermarket chain to commit to completely eliminating disposable plastic grocery bags. It has eliminated all plastic bags in its UK, US and Canadian stores.
Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (NSLC), Manitoba Liquor Marts – These Canadian liquor boards are all in the process or have phased out the use of plastic bags in their stores. Societe des alcools du Quebec (SAQ) will sell reusable bags only and no longer offer paper or plastic.
Phone Companies - Recycle your cell phone and parts – most phone companies offer recycling programs that will either donate your used phone to charity or if unable to use, will properly dispose them for you
As far back as I can remember, we were a recycling kinda family. My grandmother had a green thumb and everything that came out of her garden went right back in the form of carrot peels, pear cores, onion ends etc. helping to create the wonderful produce that we looked forward to eating. As children, we diligently took the dinner scraps to the compost. We knew everything that went into the compost turned into nutrient rich soil that went right back into the garden, into the vegetables and onto our plates. Even the water used was often gathered rain water. Her little garden may as well have been an abundant field with its yield. The same tradition carried out in our own home and my mom encouraged us to take the container out to the compost regularly. This was just such a regular part of our lives. It was funny one year when our small pine tree smack in front of our house started to sprout cantaloupes (we sort of got a little eager and hadn’t let the compost settle enough). The neighbours were amused.
When I was an entrepreneurial child, decades before recycling programs came into being, my sister and I would gather newspapers from the neighbourhood to sell to recyclers. I think we earned .25 for every bundled foot we gathered. I would like to sit here proclaiming I was doing this to save the environment but more realistically, I was trying to make some cash! We did this for quite some time until Dad vetoed the deal as our ‘business’ was taking over the garage and pushing out the family car. Soon there after, local recycling programs came into being. Although my cash flow dwindled, the message had sunk in – while we were making cash, we were also diverting tons (or in the words of my younger self “garagefulls”) of newspapers from landfills.
I was fortunate to grow up in one of the 1st suburbs of Toronto to offer a curbside recycling program. Even before this my parents would take us to the recycling depot. We recycled what we could from day 1 and I give my mom credit for making it a normal and expected part of our upbringing. She was one of the first consumers I knew to always bring re-usable bags to the grocery store even when the cashier would look at her dumbfounded and slightly annoyed as they would take a few extra minutes to load. The only bags on the market back then were in essence a bunch of crocheted holes gathered together and were not practical to load. There are tons of amazing bags on the market now often made from recycled products or canvas. Her example (take note parents!!) influenced me greatly and to this day I have containers throughout my home to make recycling gathering easier – everything from toilet paper rolls to envelopes gets recycled. I have cool recycling containers tucked in corners of rooms or neat bags hanging on the back of doorknobs. Most areas of Toronto and many municipalities have ‘green’ bins now which accept anything from food scraps to diapers to paper towels. It is incredible to see how much is finally being diverted from landfills.
Even as a diligent recycler, I started to look at what I was throwing out and putting in the recycling bins and realized I could make even more changes, changes so subtle that they would have little impact on my household but enormous impact on the way I was affecting the earth. Please browse through the Go Green section for a few ideas I have easily implemented into my life and you can as well.