Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Reducing your garbage doesn’t mean smashing everything in a trash compacter. Instead, this refers to reducing the trash you bring into the home. One of the best places to start is at the supermarket.

Practically everything you buy at the grocery store comes in some sort of package. Some of it is boxed, some of it in plastic bags. Other items are packed in plastic jugs or glass jars. One way you can reduce packaging is to buy fresh produce instead of canned. Buying loose or “bulk” is another way to reduce trash. Bulk refers to items that are loosely stored in large bins; you buy just the amount you need and scoop the product in a small plastic bag. When you do have to buy a packaged item, buying the largest possible quantity also saves on packaging.

If you must buy something packaged, take a moment to examine if the container is recyclable. Most communities only recycle certain kinds of plastics. When given the choice between a recyclable container or not, go with the one that can be recycled. Buying concentrated or multipurpose products also helps to lower your trash output.

Now that we’ve looked how to reduce packaging, let’s look at other ways we can reduce our trash.

One big change you could make is by taking a good look at the things you throw out. Thrift stores will take old furniture, clothing, household items, toys, and accessories. Your community also may have a center for collecting salvaged building materials such as old sinks, carpet, carpet pads, lumber, screen doors, cabinets, plumbing fixtures, paint and more. Certain charities will even take old cars, eye glasses, computers, and cell phones.

The Expert answers:

Just bag them up in a garbage bag and toss it in the dumpster or put it on the curb. It’ll save you money. They are not worth recycling because they’ll end up costing more to the environment to recycle or donate. In a US sanitary landfill, it is hazardous waste, but at least contained.

The Expert answers:

In Quebec, I’m using both the plastic bags as well as the 1L and 2L cartons.

The plastic jugs I don’t like because I have to throw them in my recycling and they take up a lot of room.

I like the bags because they take up less room in my fridge, and when the bag is empty, I clean it out and re-use it for:
– freezing leftovers
– put ice inside and pound it to make crushed ice.
– put whole nuts in it and crush them with a mallet
– put meat inside and pound/tenderize to make chicken parmigiana or veal scallopini
Those milk bags are thicker than a typical sandwich bag or freezer bag, which cracks open on severe pounding.

And another thing, so many times I’ve bought the cartons only to find out they have a small leak on the bottom and I have to go back and clean sour milk out of my fridge door shelves. The milk bags are very easy to check for leaks…you squeez’em a bit and if you get squirted, they have a leak.

Keep in mind that my plastic bag and your plastic jug are pretty much the same material. So mine may be in a “garbage bag”, but yours is in what could easily be a “Rubbermaid garbage can” !

If you really want to get back to basics, let’s get the dairies to all put their milk in glass bottles again with the rubber stopper lids. Gets rid of that plastic taste in the milk.

The Expert answers:

You can use canvas garbage bags – but what your family is doing, reusing the plastic is not bad environmentally. Even the best canvas bag user ends up with a few grocery store type plastic bags. Reusing them as your trash bags is what we do, and we take the others for recycling if we end up with too many.

Otherwise, reusable alternatives usually need washing, at least once in awhile, simply because you keep reusing them all the time.

The Expert answers:

We go through one 13 gallon bag a day also as well as a smaller bathroom trash can with diapers and bath stuff.

We’re trying to get better about recycling!

The Expert answers:

I can think of several ways that recycling can save you money:

1. There are still places that will give you money for recycling something, such as aluminum cans. Additional, certain states charge a bottle or can deposit when you buy certain beverages. You will get your money back by returning your cans and bottles to the store.

2. Some cities charge for trash pick-up according to the size of garbage can you use, so you are charged more if you throw away more trash. They usually do not charge more for extra recycling, so the more you recycle, the less you will pay for your trash service. (Sadly, this is not offered in my city, which will allow residents to fill up to 3 – 90 gallon trash containers without any additional charge.)

3. Finally, one of the best ways to recycle, in my opinion, is to reuse certain things rather than throwing them away or sending them to a recycling facility. It takes energy (electricity, etc.) to process items at a recycling facility, so often the most environmentally friendly way to recycle something is to continue to reuse it yourself. For example, I use ziploc bags over and over again, until they fall apart, and I use old yogurt containers as tupperware. I haven’t purchased ziploc bags or tupperware in years!

The Expert answers:

The plastic bag problem is bigger than just that it is made of petroleum. Plastic bags are a huge litter problem, they are hard to recycle and to contain. They fly away from garbage cans, automobiles and landfills. They are found in the middle of the ocean and in the backwoods, they pose a threat to both land and marine wildlife. Animals get fatally intangled, and they eat it thinking it is food. Plastic never biodegrades, it just continues to breakdown and is toxic to all life.

The Expert answers:

Many people don’t clean out the plastic bags before placing them for recycling. Recycling plants have a difficult time recycling the plastic bags because any contaminates left in the bags will contaminate the entire batch that they try to recycle, thus making it so they have to toss it as garbage. Time and money is wasted as a result, so recycling plants have taken to not accepting them as recycling material. Therefore, grocers are now phasing them out.

The Expert answers:

The idea of cleaning the cans and bottles is they are usually put into open top recycling containers. You do not want to attract animals to your containers.

You do not have to recycle if you do not want to. Most places have recycling systems that catch stuff anyway, all you are doing is making it more efficient and profitable for them.

If you use cans you do not have to bag stuff but bagging it is better as it keeps stuff from blowing all over the place if the cans get knocked over. If you do not use cans then you need to bag stuff tightly.

You do not have to cut up the cardboard and tie it but it should be flat, not boxes.

You might consider tipping the garbage guys $20 for Christmas. That will make them a little more willing to cut you some slack should you screw up.