Take-Out Cutlery

Being eco-friendly isn’t all that tough when you make simple little changes that make a huge difference. Most people get overwhelmed and freak out about it, asking ‘what can I do? ’

The answer is easy. You can do a lot, right in your own home and you own life. Seriously, you can. For example:
The US alone compiles billions of tons of waste a year due to people not taking the time to simply use those green and blue bins that waste management gives us to recycle. Taking a couple of extra seconds to toss those empty soup or veggie cans into that bin would save on the average 3,000 – 5,000 pounds of lost metal waste used per year, per household. Then, there are the regular soda consumers out there as well. The average American household consumes an average of 3 cans per family member, per day, as a minority statistic. The higher categories claim to consume more of 6-9 cans per day average. The worst category consumes more than 1.5 12 packs per day, as it is all they drink.
As this isn’t a healthy choice article, we are all about the numbers of wastes that presents in this case. Taking just the lowest group of soda drinkers, at 3 cans per family member, that is a 12 pack per day in a family of 4 people. In 30 days time, that comes out to 10,800 cans consumed in a month. That would be an average of 16 cans to produce a pound of metal waste, which comes out to a whopping 675 lbs/month of saved materials that don’t have to be mined for replacement.

Tip #1: Recycle your old cans and conserve new, raw materials.
Same thing with your old newspapers, old mail fliers, magazines, etc. That compiles over 50 pounds of paper a month if you get the daily paper during the week and the larger Sunday paper on the weekends. That totals up to an average of 7,200 lbs of wasted paper per subscriber, per year if you don’t recycle it. You may think you are in the clear because you don’t read the newspaper however, if you read that favorite collection of magazines that come in every month, you are right. You are clearly way over and beyond the volume of the newspapers. This doesn’t count catalogs, mail or anything else that can come into play here. We are keeping this as direct as possible for this one.
Did you know that the average magazine weight is 1.5 – 2 lbs of paper, not counting the glue or staples involved in binding them together? Take the average household has 3-5 sports, cars, outdoor recreational magazines for men/boys and 3-5 craft, home living, food, clothing and celebrity/society news magazines for women. You are looking at a min. average of 9 pounds of paper waste per month. This is based on the average monthly subscriber. You can up that to 9-12 pounds of paper waste a week in homes that are weekly or more aggressive readers/subscribers.

Tip #2: Recycle your old papers and magazines to be reused for other things, such as bio-cartons, your next newspaper, etc.
Covering all of the above purchases for most of us, where we get them all through our favorite supermarket chains, we are moving on to one of the most powerful tips of all.
I’m talking about the paper vs. plastic issue debate. The key is not to even be a part of it. Paper bags kill multi-thousands of new trees for paper pulp every year. If consumers don’t use them, the stores don’t buy them and the tress don’t die for it.
Don’t get me wrong, as I’m not saying all paper or wood should stop being produced as production materials, not at all. What I am saying is that producing disposable products, such as paper grocery bags is a waste of those resources. Same thing with the plastic bag issue, as there are billions of tons of plastic bags just thrown away every single year because of every time someone gets a pack of gum and a soda at a quick stop somewhere, it is dropped into one of those bags. Every time people shop on the supermarket, they bring home at least 5 of those bags in hand. The result is more chemical production for more plastic production and more waste, as well as harmful gases produced to create them in the first place.
The resolution to the situation is to recycle whichever of these two options you get from the store on the fly and to carry your own re-useable shopping bags to the store with you when you do your major shopping. Keep them in your trunk, so that if you impulse-shop, you aren’t getting a car full of those other materials that you simply don’t need to use.

Tip #3: Use re-useable shopping bags and recycle the paper and plastic shopping bags when you do have to use them.
As you can see, it doesn’t take a million dollars or an army to make a huge impact for bettering our planet. It didn’t get the way it is in that manner and it won’t be repaired that way either. It all happens in little routine actions over a period of time…we can fix the damage, beginning with our own efforts to fuel it being taken away.
The choice is ours’, it always has been…what will that choice be for you?