photo by D'Arcy Norman
The following is a guest post from Lynn Fang.
Did you know that the average American generates 4.4 pounds of trash a day? In 2008, Americans generated about 167 million tons of trash that was not recycled or composted.
As many of you probably know, waste is harmful. It stays to pollute the environment; landfills release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Some waste services incinerate the garbage before placing it in a landfill, which releases a host of other toxins including dioxins. Dioxins are a known human carcinogen and environmental pollutant. Trash is in the oceans, stockpiled in a huge vortex in remote waters.
In light of all this, I have compiled a friendly list of 10 ways to save money while saving waste:
1. Use washcloths and rags in the kitchen instead of paper towels. 3000 tons of waste a day is generated by the use of paper towels. Don’t buy them. Stock your kitchen with a few washcloths to do all your dirty cleaning. That’s a one-time expense of maybe $5 for new towels, and they are sure to last you at least a year.
2. Use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.
3. Use real dishes rather than paper plates. This might sound obvious, but some people still cave to paper plates.
4. Purchase and use a reusable water bottle and reusable coffee thermos. Make your own coffee. The recommended eight glasses of water a day, at U.S. tap rates equals about $.49 per year; that same amount of bottled water is about $1,400. Making your own coffee for one year can save you $120. An estimated 23 billion coffee cups is expected to be wasted in 2010.
5. Make your own homemade cleaners to save plastic bottles. Blisstree has a great compilation of 25 Safe, Non-toxic, Homemade Cleaning Supplies. General household cleaning centers around the use of baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, Borax, and water. Using these few ingredients for cleaning areas in the kitchen, bathroom, washing dishes, and cleaning carpets are much cheaper than getting a specific cleaner for every part of the home. Here are some other great resources for homemade cleaner recipes:
- Tipnut: 10 Homemade Laundry Soap Detergent Recipes
- Tipnut: Homemade Dishwasher Detergent Recipes
- Altuse.com: Discover Alternative Uses for Everyday Products
6. Use cloth tissues rather than paper tissues. I cut my own from old t-shirts:
Lynn Fang's T-shirt tissues
7. Compost kitchen scraps and yard waste. Don’t buy fertilizer! Take that one step further and grow your own food. If you don’t have a yard, try indoor container gardening
- AZ Master Gardener Manual: Container Garden
- Guidelines for Indoor Vegetable Gardening
- Grow an Organic Indoor Vegetable Garden
8. Repurpose old T-shirts into cloth shopping bags. I made one following this tutorial:
Lynn's repurposed bag
9. Reuse glass food containers and drink bottles.Try these resources for repurposing your glass jars and bottles:
10. Buy from the bulk bin, and buy only what you need and know you will use. Bring your own containers {like the ones you saved in #9}.
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Comments ( 7 )
[...] pockets there was no inevitable white tissue explosion in the washer and dryer. I took a tip from Cheap Like Me and decided to cut up some of my own “tissues” out of old T-shirts I was going to turn into [...]
Greener and Cheaper: 4 Green Living Tips That Can Save Money Too « The Laundry List added these pithy words on Feb 02 11 at 4:27 pmI do almost everything on your list. It’s amazing how much trash we don’t have anymore.
Condo Blues added these pithy words on
Jun 30 10 at
3:47 pm
Me too. It cracks me up to see how the recycling barrel is more emptier as well as the garbage can.
Rob added these pithy words on
Jun 30 10 at
4:43 pm
Great list!
I find it amazing how much trash people make. I think I’d really have to try hard to create 4.4 pounds a day. I’m currently on a little mission to try to create less than 100 gallons of garbage in a year, and it really hasn’t been hard at all! http://www.greeniacdigest.com/the-great-garbage-challenge-of-2010-part-3/2010/06/16/
To your list I would add:
Use natural/compostable kitty litter and compost it separately from your food compost. Use the finished compost only on ornamental plants.
Work towards eliminating pre-packaged, canned and frozen foods from your diet. When you go shopping think of it as buying ingredients rather than meals.
Stop buying stuff. In most cases we can easily get what we need through Freecycle, buying used (thrift stores, Craigslist etc.) or borrowing things that we only need to use infrequently. You produce MUCH less trash when you’re not bringing home new stuff every day!
Rebecca The Greeniac added these pithy words on
Jun 30 10 at
10:24 pm
I can’t bring myself to use cloth tissues, but all the other selections are good. I find the jars that certain cheese come in to be great for small amounts of leftovers or chopped onions or something similar.
Beth Partin added these pithy words on
Jul 12 10 at
9:53 pm
For hard-core savings,try family cloths….washable toilet paper. Not for poop, only for pee in this house, but it has saved money and our septic system.
Julie added these pithy words on
Jul 27 10 at
8:01 pm
