Climate change can seem like a daunting issue, but there are SO many things that each person can do in their life to make a positive change on the environment. It might seem like only one person can’t make a difference, but with 328.2 million people living in the United States, those individual people add up. If everyone decided to start living a more ‘green’ life, we would see tremendous impact. This post kicks off our newest blog series where we will teach you about different green habits that you can start implementing in your life!
Our first tip is to start recycling, which I’m sure is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about changing your habits. This is one of the easiest ways to reduce your impact on the environment, yet most people don’t recycle in their daily life. Recycling may seem like it doesn’t make much of a difference, but it
actually reduces the amount of waste in landfills, conserves natural resources, prevents pollution from harvesting raw materials, and encourages American manufacturing in the recycling industry.
Items that are recycled can be reused to create new products that would otherwise have used up new raw materials. For instance these are some of the many common items that are manufactured using raw materials:
newspaper/paper towels
plastic laundry detergent bottles
soda cans (aluminum cans)
plastic/glass soft drink containers
egg containers
trash bags
cereal boxes
comic books
Depending on where you live recycling can look different, but it is often more easily accessible than people believe. Some places (like college/university) have recycling bins next to the trash cans, making it easy to locate where recyclables should go. However, if you live in a house/apartment, it might be harder to determine where you can recycle. In most cities there are three major options, curbside pickup, recycling drop-off areas, or deposit/refund programs. For curbside pickup, individuals will pick up recycling, similar to trash pick-up. For recycling drop-off areas, you take the recycling yourself to a designated location and employees will help you sort it. Finally, there are several deposit/refund programs that pay you to recycle items like aluminum soda cans. Before putting items in the recycling bin it is important you check to see that your recycling option takes that item but these items are generally accepted as recyclable:
cardboard
paper
food boxes
mail (should remove personal information)
cans
glass bottles
jars/jugs
plastic bottle caps
Recycling is an easy habit that can make a big difference in reducing the waste that we as humans produce. We hope you learned something about recycling, and stay tuned because Thursday we will learn more about how your transportation habits can help reduce our impact on the climate.
- Edible Landscape Initiative
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