Change our Environment, One Piece of Trash at a Time

Today our world has drastically changed from the one of even just 40 years ago. Our for forests have shrunk from covering 16 million square kilometers (6 million square miles) to roughly 6 million square kilometers. While wildlife population has reduced by half in just the last 40 years. On top of that, our oceans contain approximately 245,000 metric tons of garbage, and this number is rising. This is a global crisis, one that needs to be addressed by every person on this planet, we are the only ones who can make a change.

If everyone started making changes in their own daily consumption and waste, we could potentially see great environmental changes in the next 10, 20, 50 years.

I love to recycle, I try to recycle every little piece of trash that I generate, so hopefully I can convince some of you readers to hop on the wagon with me.

So, for starters, you can buy a recycling service from your local waste management company, that is if your community does not offer recycling already. For many years my family didn’t have a recycling service, yet we still recycled. We sorted all of our plastics, glass, aluminum and papers, accumulated a whopping pile, then hauled it 40 minutes to my university and dumped it in their enormous recycling bins. We did that for years, until our waste management company offered a recycling system. Luckily, I think most communities now offer a recycling service – so take advantage of it!

There are a few rules to recycling though, ones that should be followed to allow for optimal recycling from the services. These include:

• Make sure you know which items and sizes of these items your service accepts. All plastics are numbered (usually on the bottom)

• Wash everything you are recycling, remove all food residue. A huge portion of recycled material never makes it past the sorting phase because it is too dirty. So wash, wash, wash

• Buy products that have already been recycled. Then recycle them again

• Look to buy products that are not packaged in unnecessary amounts of plastic or wrapping

• Buy more items in glass, aluminum and metal packaging – skip the plastic when you can

• Stop using plastic bags at the grocery store or even while shopping, bring a recycle bag or paper

• Almost every little paper can be recycled (envelopes, sheets, receipts, newspaper, clothing tags)

• Reuse the plastic bags that you already own

• Don’t let the water run – it’s a waste of water and energy

• Turn the lights off – saves energy and your money

• Less is more

• Recycle at home as well as away from it

Every small participation helps make a difference to the wildlife, oceans and the many animals and organisms on the planet suffering from our excessive waste. Help make our planet green once more.

A great way to help reduce the amount of garbage currently in the ocean is by checking out the company 4Ocean. They remove trash from the ocean in return you receive a bracelet from completely recycled material. So check them out at  https://4ocean.com/

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.