Tag Archives: Reusing

Recycling Hacks To Get Familiar With

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According to research, there are around 100,000 pounds of garbage that your community can create. This can have a great impact on the environment like diminishing resources, pollution, and landfills. Meanwhile, recycling is an activity which you can implement every day. It can help in maintaining a green home. This can aid in the reduction of negative effects on the environment. Thus, here are some recycling hacks to get started today:

 

Start with Small Steps

When you have decided to recycle, do not feel as if you have to start big. Passion for the environment is a great thing. But when you place too much pressure on yourself to get green, this can lead to frustration and stress throughout the process.

Thus, it is best to allow yourself to start small. Learn one part of the process and begin with it. Then, make it a habit for you and your family to begin easy before proceeding to the next part. As you take these baby steps, you will be more likely to include recycling on your life permanently. This is an effective Solutions on Waste, Recycling and Processing Recyclable Materials.

Reduce and Reuse

Part of recycling is reducing the things you use. Reusing the items you use every day instead of throwing them in the bin can aid you in your recycling efforts. Limiting the things that you have to dump will help you control the situation.

Know the Things That Can Be Recycled

It is easy to overlook the items and get confused about where to put your trash. Thus, you should check with your service provider on the specific garbage in your program. But here are the basic principles in recycling:

Cardboard and Paper

All kinds of paper are acceptable which includes flyers, books, colored paper, and junk mail. Do not include waxy papers. You can recycle cardboard so long as it is not filled with grease and food like pizza boxes. For other food boxes like cereals, make sure that you remove first the liners.

Plastic

Recyclable plastics have indicated numbers on them and you can see it at the bottom. Numbers one to seven can be recycled. Take note that you cannot recycle the majority of the utensils because of the low-quality plastic used. If you can crumple easily the plastic bag, then you don’t have to include it in the recycle bin. The curbside will not accept the plastic bags but your local store can collect and reuse them.

Aluminum

As a general rule, you can recycle all aluminum cans. Just clean and rinse it to remove juices and sodas. This can prevent the onslaught of the insect in the area.

Glass

You can recycle glass containers. Before you put them in the recycle bin, rinse them. Make sure that you don’t break these glass containers. When the glass shatters, it can’t be recycled anymore. This is because mixing various colors can contaminate the batches. Indeed, this is an easy and effective Solutions on Waste, Recycling and Processing Recyclable Materials.

Put a Bin in Each Room

Place a recycle bin at the bathroom, office, and bedroom. With this, you can collect all kinds of recyclable materials inside your house.

Waste Management in Sweden: Perspectives

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Sweden is considered as a global leader in sustainable waste management and in the reduction of per capita carbon footprint. The country consistently works to lower its greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency and increase public awareness. Over the past 10 years, Sweden developed methods of repurposing waste, so less than one percent of the total waste generated in the country makes it to landfills. To accomplish this, the country changed their perspective of garbage.

Increase Recycling

Recycling is a part of Swedish culture. Residents regularly sort recyclable materials and food scraps from other waste in their homes before disposal. This streamlines the recycling process and reduces the effort required to sort large volumes of waste at larger recycling centers. As another way to promote recycling, the Swedish government created legislation stating recycling centers must be within 1,000 feet of residential areas. Conveniently located facilities encourage citizens to properly dispose of their waste.

Repurpose Materials

Citizens are also encouraged to reuse or repurpose materials before recycling or disposing of them. Repurposing and reusing products requires less energy when compared to the recycling or waste disposal process. As Swedes use more repurposed products, they reduce the volume of new products they consume which are created from fresh materials. In turn, the country preserves more of its resources.

Invest in Waste to Energy

Over 50 percent of the waste generated in Sweden is burned in waste-to-energy facilities. The energy produced by these facilities heats homes across the country during the long winter months. Localized heating — known as district heating — has improved air quality throughout the nation. It’s easier and more economical to control the emissions from several locations as opposed to multiple, smaller non-point sources.

Another benefit of waste-to-energy facilities is that ash and other byproducts of the burning process can be used for road construction materials. As a whole, Sweden doesn’t create enough waste to fuel its waste to energy plants — the country imports waste from its neighbors to keep its facilities going.

In the early 1990’s, the Swedish government shifted the responsibility for waste management from cities to the industries producing materials which would eventually turn to waste. To promote burning waste for energy, the government provides tax incentives to companies which make more economically attractive.

Impact of Waste-to-Energy

Although Sweden has eliminated the volume of trash entering landfills, they have increased their environmental impacts in other ways. Waste-to-energy facilities are relatively clean in that most harmful byproducts are filtered out before entering the environment, though they still release carbon-dioxide and water as their primary outputs. On average, waste-to-energy plants generate nearly 20 percent more carbon-dioxide when compared to coal plants.

 

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Coal plants burn and release carbon which is otherwise sequestered in the ground and unable to react with the earth’s atmosphere. Waste-to-energy facilities consume and release carbon from products made of organic materials, which naturally release their carbon over time. The downside to this process is that it frees the carbon from these materials at a much faster rate than it would be naturally.

The reliance on the waste-to-energy process to generate heat and the tax incentives may lower Swedish motivation to recycle and reuse materials. The country already needs to import trash to keep their waste-to-energy plants running regularly. Another disadvantage of this process is the removal and destruction of finite materials from the environment.

Even though Sweden continues to make strides in lowering their environmental impact as a whole, they should reevaluate their reliance on waste to energy facilities.