Reduce, reuse, recycle all around the house.
A slogan of the "green" movement summarizes what you need to do to make an environmentally friendly impact: "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." These are three actions you can incorporate right into your lifestyle to aid in saving and restoring the environment. There are thousands of ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. You can make a few of them into habits -- and then a few more. Does this Spark an idea?
Gardens
Establishing an environmentally friendly garden starts with reducing your use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. They can pollute ground water through storm-water runoff, disturbing the ecological balance wherever the water goes. Toxic synthetic pesticides and herbicides can kill desirable bugs and animals in the garden. This unbalances the garden as an ecological system. Don't water the garden on a schedule, do it only as needed. Consider growing less lawn and more food, flowers, and trees to add more oxygen to the air.
Reduce
Reducing means using or buying less of something. When you reduce consumption of things you reduce the amount of trash in the world and reduce the use of resources to manufacture and transport products. Four ways to reduce make a big impact. Wash your clothes in cold water and dry them on a clothesline when possible. Take your own shopping bags to the market instead of bringing home plastic bags. Buy only what you really need instead what you want. When you do shop, avoid products that are packaged in layers of plastic. Consume less meat. The meat industry is one of the largest producers of carbon emissions.
Reuse
Reuse is what you do before you recycle. Get every bit of use out of things before you toss them out. Fix broken things instead of replacing them. Find new uses for broken items or parts of broken items. Give away things you don't want. Purchase used items instead of new. Make it a household challenge to see how little trash you can create by thinking of ways to reuse. You can use wrapping paper a second time, rewire lamps, send shoes for repairs, replace broken zippers, give old cars to charity, have a yard sale.
Recycle
Recycling means changing something into a new form for use a second or third time. Composting in the garden is a good example. Make nutritious compost for plants by setting up a simple system to decompose household food and paper waste. Many municipalities and private companies collect and recycle items ranging from glass to electronics, rubber to plastic. Seek out ways to get your castoff materials into recycling even if the regular garbage truck doesn't take them.
Tags: broken items, environmentally friendly, ways reduce
