Hello Everyone!
First, I’d like to remind you all that my new book, Clean Your Home Healthy, Green Cleaning Made Easy, is now available for pre-sale on Amazon.com and Target.com, and will be in bookstores very, very soon…
Today, I’d like to talk about your garbage. Though recycling has become the norm in many households, most people don’t realize that nearly 75% of household waste can be recycled, composted, or reused.
Of course, we all know about paper and glass recycling. But did you know that you can recycle your aluminum foil? Staples and paper clips? Refrigerators and television sets? Even your old car? If you’re not sure what to do with an item, don’t just toss it: contact your local recycling facility and ask if there’s a way to recycle or reuse it.
But there’s another side to household waste, one that’s not often addressed. When the garbage truck comes to your curb, you’re not just throwing away what’s in your trash bags, you’re throwing away the bags themselves.
When you use traditional plastic garbage bags, you’re actually preserving your trash. Not exactly what you envision when you think about saving for posterity, is it? Plastic is airtight, and delays the process of decomposition. And the most frightening fact of all is this: plastic never biodegrades. It can tear or separate into miniscule, even microscopic pieces – and subsequently poison entire food chains, as we’re currently seeing happen in the Pacific Ocean – but it never breaks down. Unless it has been incinerated, every piece of plastic ever manufactured is still in existence. Consider the enormity of that fact, and you’ll never want to toss a piece of plastic again. It’s amazing that we’re not up to our ears in the stuff already – but if we don’t slow down our consumption, our children will be.
In the coming years, how you toss your trash will be nearly as important as what you toss. Bioreactor landfills, while rare today, will (hopefully) become a more popular alternative in future to standard landfills, which are so anaerobic (oxygen-deficient) that nothing – not even organic matter like vegetable peelings – can break down properly. Bioreactor landfills allow materials to decompose – a process which produces methane gas, which is captured and used to produce electricity for the surrounding area.
One way to lessen your impact today is to choose biodegradable garbage bags. You’ll not only prevent many pounds of plastic from entering your local landfill, you’ll be making it easier for future generations to use the contents of said landfill for energy production. Also, biodegradable garbage bags contain no petroleum by-products, and so help reduce our reliance on oil: this makes them a viable choice even if your local landfill is not a bioreactor facility.
You can find BioBag lawn bags, kitchen bags, and food waste bags (suitable for composting) at some Whole Foods locations, or buy online at drugstore.com. EcoSafe EcoBio kitchen bags are also a great choice.
You can reduce your plastic bag usage in other ways, too. Bring your own bags to the grocery store – or opt for paper bags, which can be recycled at all facilities. Paper bags can even be filled with extra recyclables and left on the curb with your bins.
A few areas have plastic bag recycling programs: here in Rhode Island, we have the ReStore program, which collects plastic grocery bags from drop-off points at local supermarkets. If your area doesn’t recycle plastic bags, opt not to use them at all.
Working together, we can create a healthier future for our children and our planet. So get your family together and talk trash!
Cheers!
Candita Clayton
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