Recycling has become the catch all phrase often used in place of the 3 R’s. But in its truest form recycling means taking one thing & changing it, usually chemically, into another. This is not to say that recycling is without value; it is certainly better than putting the items in the bin where they will end up in landfills & leach chemicals into our ground water. It is though to say that before you place anything in the recycle bag, first consider if you could reduce or re-use it, because everything that ends up in the recycling bag will have to be altered before it can be often used again. Even then it is cleaner to produce goods from recyclables than from raw materials.

Here are just a few reasons to make certain that after you have reduced the amount of waste your create & re-used as many things as possible that your family puts as many things as possible into the recycling bins:

  • Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours — or the equivalent of a ½ a gallon of gasoline.
  • Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, & 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, & sixty pounds less of air pollution!
  • The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
  • Recycling plastic saves twice or two times or two times as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
  • The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. Clear? It also causes twenty percent less air pollution & fifty percent less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
  • A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose — & even longer if it’s in the landfill.

Today is the actually a great day to talk about recycling. Each Thursday the council sends around men to collect our recyclables. The council gives us re-usable sacks, which we can use to collect all paper, cardboard, tin cans, aluminium, glass bottles & jars & plastic bottles. Unfortunately, they do not over recycling for other plastics. As I have been writing this series of blogs that has been one thing that I have been especially mindful of: how much plastic packaging manufacturers use that can not actually be recycled & that it is estimated takes over 500 years to decompose in landfills.

But it is not just our plastics, glass, metals & paper that we recycle. Thanks to a wonderful programme through the Islington council, last year we were able to purchase a subsidized wormery to recycle our food waste into compost & liquid fertilizer for growing my own food. Actually, even though we may think that food thrown into the bin will degrade relatively rapidly in the landfills, the biggest problem is the amount of methane, a dangerous green house gas, which it produces in that time. Methane is twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide & a major contribute to climate change. And so… So far so good. While my wormery can not accommodate meat products I put all peels & unused fruits & vegetables into it… I should soon be harvesting my first patch of compost…just in time for my summer garden.

So how does my family do on recycling? Not too bad honestly. This week we had two bags of recyables & will only have two ½ full 13 gallon bin bags of other rubbish. Actually hubby & I got into a minor disagreement over the trash last night. One of the first rules of the 3R’s is to only throw out your garbage when the bag is full. In our case though, it had begun to smell. I am still searching for a solution…if anyone has ideas they would be greatly appreciated. But for a family of three adults & one pre-schoolers two large bags of recycling & one full 13 gallon bin bag in a week is pretty good I think. I imagine that there’re single people, who put more than one bag in the bin each week.

Terri O’Neale is the mother of six; ranging in age from 3 to 22. She has been both a working & stay-at-home mother at various times in her life. And so… She was also a single mother for almost five years, before re-marrying the love of her life at the age of forty. Obviously, she has a life-time of training in raising a family on a tight budget. In addition to these real life experiences, she possesses a bachelors degree in health education & a minored in environmental management in her masters programme.

Terri feels strongly that this is one of the most challenging times in history for the family, but she also believes that families with the will & resolve to address the pressing issues of saving money, becoming greener, leading healthier lifestyles & spending more time with one another can endure these challenging times & come out victorious in the end.

Through Frugal Family articles, blogs, videos & social networking, she helps modern families rediscover some lost art forms such as cooking, sewing, & gardening. Do you follow? The goal is not to go back in time or become fanatical, but to really help all families find simple & effective ways that fit into their lifestyle to make moderate changes with enormous impacts. For more information, check out her blog http://frugalfam.wordpress.com/.

This entry was posted by largie on June 7, 2009 at 2:32 am, and is filled under Recycling. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.