Here's an example of how one species "waste" is another's food.

WORM FARMS

Alright, we're not talking maggots here. Worm farms contain the friendly little wrigglers that come out during rainy season.

Worms eat and process their own weight daily. Use biodegradable supplies - trash bags, utensils, cups, straws, packing material - add them to your compost with your fruits and veggies to feed the worms. Every three to six months use the worm castings as fertilizer and green your world! There are also a wide variety of "wormless" composting methods. The process may take a bit longer, but the concept is the same.
Photo by Jocelyn Ball

 
Recycle
 

Nearly everything we buy and use is recyclable. Recycling programs in cities worldwide sort and process used material, which can be turned into park benches and playground equipment. Clothing made from recycled material is quietly making its way into our lives. For example, the textile industry is turning used plastic water bottles into polyester fabric. The energy saved by recycling one glass bottle is sufficient to light a 100 watt bulb for four hours. In the United States, we throw away 106,000 aluminum cans every 30 seconds. If those cans were all piled up they would make a stack 70 feet high by 100 feet wide.

It takes a hundred times more energy to make a new aluminum can than it does to recycle one, and yet only 50 percent of those cans will be recycled. Americans also discard an average of 426,000 cell phones daily, whose batteries and circuit boards contain toxic materials that can leech into groundwater. A better choice would be to donate the phones to one of numerous charity organizations that reprogram them and give them to halfway houses, or will dispose of them properly.

Photo by Michelangelo-36. GNU Free Documentation License , Version 1.2

Another form of recycling that is often overlooked is simply repurposing consumer goods for additional uses. Try as we might, we will all forget that canvas grocery bag sooner or later and end up with paper or plastic. Don't feel you've failed, just use those bags again in some other way. Grocery bags make good trash can liners and means buying less new plastic.

From grocery bags to clothing to used furniture, with a little creativity, much of the so-called junk we throw away can be given new and useful life.

So what's the right choice? Recycling saves landfill space and money, and is one of the most efficient ways to conserve our planet's natural resources.

 
back