How to Reduce the Amount of Waste You Produce Each Week
Until you start monitoring it closely, it may surprise you how much waste you generate each week, both at home and at work. However, this is something that you can easily change by making a few adjustments.
Consider the following ways that you can reduce how much waste you produce each week and then apply the changes to help keep our world healthy!
Control Incoming Paper
One of the easiest ways to reduce waste is to prevent much of the paper that comes in your home or office. Cancel unread newspapers or magazines, contact businesses and ask if you can get notifications by email and request that you be taken off junk mail lists. Additionally, if you have children, work with the schools to limit the flyers and notices that come home with them. Not only will this reduce the waste you generate, but it will make your life easier too!
Reduce Packaging Waste
How many products do you buy that come in a prepackaged form? Consider buying a large bottle of soda instead of individual bottles, purchasing fresh produce instead of frozen and making your own pitcher of tea instead of purchasing premade tea. Each of these small changes can add up to helping you prevent a large amount of packaging waste.
Avoid Disposables
Bring a refillable mug to your favorite coffee shop to save a paper cup. Bring your own lunch in eco-friendly containers instead of buying chips from the vending machine. Don’t buy a meal from the fast food restaurant that will produce 2 wrappers, a bag and a cup. Choose to use cloth diapers instead of disposables. There are non-disposable options for many of the products you throw away each day.
Recycle (More)
While nearly everyone knows how easy it is to recycle aluminum cans, have you considered recycling more? Talk to your waste removal company and find out what other items you can recycle too. Just because you are generating these waste items does not mean they have to wind up in the landfill.
There are many things you can do in your day-to-day life that will reduce the amount of waste you send to the landfill.
To recap, keep these things in mind and you’ll make a big impact—and this is only the beginning:
- Reduce the paper that comes into your home or office.
- Cut out pre-packaged items when possible.
- Reduce your reliance on disposable products.
- Determine which items you are throwing away that could instead be recycled.