How much trash do you accumulate? And more importantly what do you throw in the trash bin every day? What if instead of disposing of all these things, you could just recycle them somehow? The Environmental Protection Agency or EPA estimates that Americans can produce as much as 250 million tons of trash. Unfortunately, of this amount, only 87 million tons of trash is recycled and the rest is just tossed in dumpsters and then on to landfills.
So coming back to the question, what do you throw away and how can it be recycled? Conduct a waste audit, and you will find answers to these questions. What do you need for this: protective equipment is a must because it can get a little messy at times, so get yourselves some goggles and gloves, which will make the task a little easier. You will probably also need a scale; you can either use the one in your bathroom, which many already have in their homes or a luggage scale. This is all that you need. Now let’s get into the real process.
Find some place with a lot of room where you can do this; keep in mind that this place will become quite messy by the time you are done. Now collect all your bins and gather some recyclable bags. If you want, factor time into the analysis. For instance, if you have an idea of your weekly trash amount, you can arrive at an estimated trash weight for that week.
Now sort through trash bags and separate your trash into different piles. The most common of these are paper, glass, food and cardboard. Analyze them and you will realize that many of them can be recycled. Now take each pile and weigh it separately; record the value somewhere. After every pile has been weighed, sum up the weight of each.
If you conduct a waste audit regularly, you will have an idea of the amount of trash you are sending to the landfills. Moreover, you also realize the areas in which you are producing the maximum weight and you can also pinpoint items which you can recycle.
So what can you do with all the recyclable items? Send them to a local recycling facility or if your city offers recycling services, you can leave them in the proper bins to be picked up. In this way, you are benefitting not only yourself, but the environment as well.
Source: www.earth911.com
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