5 Tips to Help Protect our Earth

Source: www.all-recycling-facts.com

Here are some tips to make your journey in protecting our earth a smoother one.

Recycling tips 1: Start small

To make a difference, you don’t have to start big. Remember, every effort counts, small or big.

A small start is better than not at all, and it can help give you greater confidence to take bigger steps down the road.

What it means to start small is to start with yourself.

Look at the things that you own and use. Things around you that you have control over. These things could be in your home, in your workplace, at your hotel room during your holidays, in your car, etc.

And as you become comfortable recycling your own things, you can expand your sphere of influence to those around you, such as your immediate family, and then your relatives and friends.

Recycling tips 2: Reduce and Reuse first

Recycling is not exactly first in line in the Waste Reduction Hierarchy. In fact, it comes third.

To make a difference to the environment, you should first look towards reducing consumption, as it is actually the first and most effective step toward producing less waste (consuming less automatically produces less waste).

However, there are times when consumption is necessary. In these cases, reuse as much as possible before recycling any remaining materials. Reusing products, where possible, is even better than recycling because the item does not need to be reprocessed before it can be used again.

Finally, if you have to make the purchases, buy products that are made of recycled materials. And make sure you recycle the items when you don’t need them anymore.

Look out for the recycling symbols on your products that tell you that they are made of recycled materials, or are designed for recycling. These practices count!

Recycling tips 3: Know what to recycle

Before you start on your recycling journey, the basic knowledge you need is to know what to recycle.

There are many items in the house, office, school etc. that can be recycled. The items range from paper, glass, metals like aluminum, plastic, electronic items and more!

For example, aluminum (used to make our coke cans) can be recycled over and over again, while not all types of plastics can be recycled. You need to look for the recycling symbols embedded at the bottom of most plastic bottles to be able to differentiate the type of plastic you have.

In other words, before you start, you will need to know what to recycle and where to send them for recycling.

Also, read more about the important recycling information you need to take note of.

Recycling tips 4: Green tips for the home

The home is where you can find lots of things for recycling.

Things are being purchased on a regular basis (e.g. groceries and household consumables). Often these products comes with lots of packaging that end up immediately as waste, if no attempts are made to reduce, reuse and recycle them.

Read more about recycling at home, for tips you can try out in your home, including composting.

And as you become more and more familiar with the habit of recycling, innovate and find your own creative ways of reducing, reusing and recycling!

Remember, all efforts count. The more individuals make it their individual responsibility to recycle and protect the earth, the better!

Recycling tips 5: Green tips for the office

The office is another place where you can expand your recycling efforts to.

At the office, some materials such as paper can be used at alarming rates. At other offices, Styrofoam cups are used on a daily basis for coffee and tea breaks, and at meetings. Imagine the amount of non-biodegradable waste these offices contribute to the incinerator and landfills on a daily basis! Scary!

Read more about office recycling tips and do your part for the earth now!

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