Wherever you live, you should have local recycle pick up at your domicile included with garbage pickup.  They usually deliver the bins free of charge. Recycling is very easy! Simply put your cans, paper, cardboard and other recyclable materials in their respective bins. The bins will be labeled so you know what materials to put in each bin.  When you recycle your household waste you will reduce landfill space, reduce the amount of oil it takes to create new products (yes, believe it or not oil is used for making hundreds of products!), reduce the amount of garbage bags you use, reduce deforestation (tree loss), reduce pollution as a result of decreased manufacturing, and you will help make the planet less dirty and scarred!  With 6 billion people now inhabiting the Earth, we simply cannot keep up with the amount of garbage we are creating.  Not only that, but the amount of different products being manufactured has risen dramatically in the past few decades.  Think about all the DVDs, video games, CDs and the like that you buy today that were not in existence until recent history.  Combine that with the population explosion and you get mountains of garbage from just new technology alone. Instead of buying movies and music on disc, download them from the internet and store on Ipods. Download Ebooks instead of buying in paper form. You will reduce packaging, tree loss, pollution from paper mills and reduce carbon emissions on transportation of goods by downloading instead of buying. There is good news out there though! Many local municipalities worldwide are finally implementing sustainable programs!

   Never throw away your plastic or paper shopping bags!!! Most people use them only once and discard them. If stores would charge ten cents a piece per bag that would reduce the amount of bags they give out for "free."  The truth is, those bags are not free. Wildlife pay a large price for them as they kill many animals every year from getting tangled in them and choking on them.  The bags get blown around easily and are found everywhere as litter. Oil is used to make plastic so the more we reuse these bags the less oil we use. Stores pay to have the bags manufactured and pass the cost on to the consumer. If we all brought our own bags to the stores our product cost would be reduced!  BETTER than reusing plastic or paper bags is to use your own tote bags.  Morningstar Trading offers 100% recycled tote bags.  Tote bags in general are easy to find and very sturdy.  You can store your bags in your vehicle so that when you stop at the store they will be with you.  There really is NO excuse for not using your own bags since we all expect to buy something when we go shopping and we know that we need to have some sort of carrier to tote our purchases in.  We can also reduce the amount of bags used by not "bagging" items that are already packaged well enough to not need to be in a bag (a bag of apples or potatoes, a case of soda, items already in a box). Most local recycle pickup does not include plastic bags so check your local stores to see if they have a shopping bag recycle bin.  Many grocery stores do have these bins so please use them. Then begin using your own fabric bags and stop the insanity of plastic bags!!!

    There are items that can be recycled that don't get collected by your local municipalities, including clothes, furniture, bedding, house wares, DVDs, CDs, etc. You can begin by donating these items and getting a tax break, having a rummage sale or giving them to friends and family. You can in turn buy donated goods from organizations that have thrift stores.  As the saying goes, "one person's junk is another person's treasure!"  Books and magazines can also be donated to local schools and libraries or given away. Many organizations also take books and magazines.  Since we recycle to reuse materials, it is imperative that as consumers we buy recycled products! There are times that we need to buy new products but what better way to support recycling than to buy products made from the items we have put in our recycle bins! This innovative niche in the business market is just the type of new technology we need to curb the amount of waste we dispose of in the United States and around the world. 

  In the United States we waste a huge amount of food both at home and in restaurants, among other establishments.  This not only fills up more landfill space but also literally "wastes" potential energy.  Not so new ideas have finally become economically feasible and municipalities are now using "digesters" to convert food waste into valuable "biogas" or methane.  The University of California at Davis uses the digester to extract fuel and fertilizer from food and yard waste.  Through Norcal Waste Systems, the City of San Francisco has been using their food waste to convert it to custom composts for vineyards. Recently the city has begun a pilot program with Norcal Waste Systems to convert dog waste into methane.   It is vitally important that this innovation continues to shape our future.  I encourage you to contact your local waste contractor to find out if they are utilizing these creative ideas,

   Everyone can make a difference simply by making small but globally monumental changes.  I encourage anyone who has read this page to practice recycling in more ways than just filling your recycle bins and to reduce the amount of waste you bring into your home and place of work in the first place!

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