EcoTrashSolutions

Reduce Waste, Find Your Old Belongings a New Home

Over the past century America has grown to become an extremely wasteful society.  The portion sizes provided at not only fast food chains, but most American restaurants, are unreal.  Or stop to think of how many times you’ve thrown away old clothes or furniture that could have easily been reused by someone else.  American industries encourage the constant purchase of the newest product and disposal of the old, whether or not this is necessary.  A culture change to incorporate more sparing and less-wasteful behavior should be considered, but encouraging simple habits such as recycling is a much easier change to come about.

The benefits of recycling go far beyond simply reducing the amount of trash we send to the landfill every year.  Recycling is an entire industry that creates jobs for Americans and can add to market competition.  By reusing old products in a new way, limited natural resources don’t have to be expended to create as many new products.  Along with the raw materials used in the creation of new products, comes the greenhouse gases that are emitted in production, which is contributing to the problem of global warming.  There are many ways to recycle beyond the traditional methods of recycling bottles and cans.  When you decide it’s time for a new computer or printer, instead of throwing it away, where it could end up leaching hazardous material into the soil of a landfill, donate or resell it.  Sites such as freecycle, Craigslist, and recycle.net are great places to unload old electronics in a less wasteful way.  Old tires can also be recycled and used for fuel, in certain types of asphalt or in other new rubber products.  Many kitchen items such as foil wrappers, Ziploc bags and metal soup cans can also be recycled and reused for a number of purposes.