Easy Recycling Day to Day

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This has been a mantra we have all heard repeatedly for quite a few years now. As with anything else there are many shades of enthusiasm when it comes to recycling. Recycling philosophy has extremes as well as a medium, middle ground.

On the lighter end of the recycling philosophy spectrum, there are those who think very little, if any, about recycling at all. On the heavier end of the recycling spectrum, we find those die-hards who do things like use little cloths instead of toilet paper and never, ever drink from a paper or plastic cup. Then there are those in the middle. It's this middle-of-the-road place where you'll find most people, the average American, when it comes to recycling. These are the people who will recycle if it's easily done without breaking their stride in daily life. That's what I want to talk about, some areas where it is easy to recycle and make a difference, going to neither extreme.

Perhaps one of the first things that comes to mind when talking about easy, obvious ways to recycle, is those plastic grocery store bags that seem to multiply in the dark like dust bunnies. The biggest step that would make a difference would be to not use the plastic bags at all. Invest in a few big, canvas bags that can be reused over and over at the grocery store, the library, for any loads you find the need to carry in a bag. That aside, the next best thing to do is to find uses for the bags. There are numerous ideas for recycling plastic grocery bags. Here are a few of those ideas:

a)Take some of the bags back to the store with you on the next grocery trip and use them again.
b)Line trash cans, saving the buying of additional trash can liners.
c)Use as an alternative to bubble wrap when packing items, balling them up and placing them around the objects being packed.
d)Keep them in the car for wet clothing, trash, dirty shoes wet umbrellas, doggy doo bags when at the park and many, many more uses.
e)Baby diaper disposal, therefore keeping the dirty diapers separate from the regular trash.
f) Wear the bags as overshoes/galoshes on rainy days, therefore keeping shoes dry.

The list of possibilities goes on infinitely, limited only by the ingenious imagination of recyclers out there.

Another seemingly no-brainer way to recycle is to save and recycle newspapers. There are several ways of accomplishing this, with the most popular and most obvious one being to take the discarded newspapers to a nearby recycle center. Sometimes local boy scout troops will have newspaper recycling drives where they will do this as a service to people and the community. In addition to that idea, newspapers also have many uses around the home such as liners for cat litter pans, protection for various surfaces when painting, repairing, crafting-anything where the floors, tables or such surfaces may need to be covered to preserve them and layering in the garden for weed control.

When finished with magazines and books, pass them along to others to read. Drop them off at hospital waiting rooms or nursing homes, places like that always need reading material. You could do this with newspapers as well, especially if you share them in a timely manner, therefore sharing greater benefit of the dated material.

A possibly less-frequently thought of, but yet still fairly easy thing to do in the realm of recycling is to reuse packaging and containers instead of just tossing them into the trash after using whatever came in them in the first place. Egg cartons and plastic bottles make great seed starters for the garden while old shoes and tin cans can be unique, useful flower pots.

The main point of this article is to show that there are many easy steps the average person can take in everyday life when it comes to recycling. Even those who are just not quite inclined to go out of their way to recycle, can recycle easily by remembering a few of the easy tips mentioned above. These types of things are small steps towards a bigger picture of less waste and therefore a better environment for us all here on the Earth. A win-win situation.