GreeniacsGuides
Recycling
Set Up a Home Recycling Station
|
Written by Greeniac24
|
||||
| Tuesday, 01 July 2008 | ||||
Set Up a Home Recycling StationA home recycling station is a sorting system for recyclables. Even though recycling is one of the easiest things to do, at times we neglect to do it simply out of sheer laziness. When it's convenient we have little trouble putting recyclables in the designated container. By setting up your own recycling station, you will make it more convenient to recycle and increase your recycling frequency. It also allows for an organized system of recycling as opposed to having piles of clutter around the house. BENEFITS for the Environment: According to the EPA, 75 percent of the waste generated by Americans is recyclable but only 25 percent of it ever is. If we recycled just 35 percent of our trash, it would be equivalent to taking 36 million cars off the road! Every day, a forest the size of Philadelphia is destroyed. We could save 500,000 trees weekly if we all recycled our Sunday newspapers. Recycling conserves energy. The energy required by a processing plant to generate a can or container from raw materials is far greater than the energy required by a recycling plant to make the item from recycled materials. A recycled aluminum could run a television for three hours and a recycled glass bottle could light a light bulb for four hours. BENERFITS for Your Wallet: Recycling can be profitable! Items that carry a redemption value can be redeemed for cash on the spot when you drop your recyclables off at a collection facility. Last year, Americans threw away $6.2 billion worth of recyclables. Even if a curbside recycling service is available, it can still pay to recycle. Providing the pick-up service costs the city money and if not enough people are recycling the city needs to assess the difference to its residents with garbage fees and other taxes. BENEFITS for the Economy: Taking the time to recycle helps create jobs. It takes only one person to incinerate 10,000 tons of waste, six people to landfill it, and 36 people to recycle it. Despite the fact that recycling requires more workers, well-run recycling facilities actually cost less to operate than waste facilities. Cost: Low to Moderate Your costs will vary depending on the containers you select to sort your recyclables. Time and Effort: Low to Moderately Low The initial set up can be completed fairly quickly. After it is set up, remember to take a few minutes a week to maintain the area and keep it clean. Setting Up Your Recycling Station: 1. Determine where you want to locate your recycling station. Since the most waste is generated in the kitchen it is an ideal locale, but anywhere is fine. 2. Find a recycling center in your area. You can do this by calling 1-800-CLEAN-UP or by visiting Earth911 Find out what materials they accept for recycling. If your city offers curbside recycling, contact them to find out what is accepted. 3. Based on what is acceptable, determine how many storage containers you will need. When choosing your storage units take into account the size of your designated area and the amount of the items your household is likely to generate. Before you go out and invest money in new products see what you have around the house that can be used. Old laundry baskets, cardboard boxes, and any unused containers lying around the house are perfectly suitable. 4. If your center is going to be in plain sight you may want to take some time to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Be creative about it. Use leftover paints and wallpaper or even old clothes to spice up your containers. Find ways to make your station blend into its surroundings. Have some fun with it! Be sure to place clear labels on the containers so there is no confusion about what goes where. 5. Arrange your containers in a way that works best for your household. Now begin utilizing your station! 6. Set up a recycling schedule to follow. Taking into account the recycling center's distance from your home, determine whether you will make daily, weekly or monthly trips. Post the schedule in your recycling station area to serve as a reminder. If you have curbside recycling, post a schedule of the days it is collected. When you make recycling part of your routine, the more likely you are to stick with it! 7. Inform everyone in your household of the recycling plan so that everyone can do their part. You can even add incentives (i.e. whoever drops the recyclables off collects whatever money it may yield) to increase participation and generate enthusiasm. Whenever you have guests over be sure to point out the station to them. What are your recycled goods used to make? Of course they can be used to remake the same product, but they can also be used for other things as well: 36 2-liter PET plastic bottles can be turned into one square yard of carpet 1,050 recycled milk jugs can be transformed into a 6 foot plastic park bench Recycled aluminum makes in way into bikes, cars, and appliances Five 2-liter PET bottles can be used to fill a ski jacket Recycled glass can be used for roads, marbles, and surfboards Close the Loop: Recycling is the just first step of the process. Purchase goods that are not only recyclable, but that are also made from recycled materials. An increase in the demand for goods made from recyclables will enlarge the market and increase the number of goods made from previously used materials.
Only registered users can write comments. |
||||
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 November 2011 ) | ||||
SEARCH GREENIACS.COM
Latest News
- Gas Pipeline Beneath Hudson River Is Approved
- Ivorian minister resigns over toxic dumping scandal
- Ohio lawmakers set new limits on owning exotic animals
- Green Blog: A Genetic Cure for Tomato Rot
- Relics With Much to Tell About Bird Diets May Be Lost
- Rights group aims to stop killing of Canada GMO pigs
Green Facts
-
Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.
-
Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
-
Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.
-
Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.
-
Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.
-
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
-
In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.
-
You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.
-
Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.
-
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
-
A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.
-
In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.
-
American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.
-
You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.
-
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.
-
Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.
-
One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.
-
Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.
-
77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.
-
Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.
-
Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.
-
Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.
-
Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.
-
Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.
-
For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.
-
Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.
-
You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.
-
A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.
-
A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.
-
The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.
-
If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.
-
Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months
-
82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.
-
Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.
-
An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!
-
It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.
-
States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.
-
Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
-
Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.


