Everyday with breakfast I read one of my new country skills books, today it was a few impactful pages from the hardcover called, A Slice of Organic Life. A couple lines that struck me:
The average person in the West throws out their own body weight in garbage every three months.
Further to this almost 75% of garbage from the average household is due to packaging.
Reusing, refurbishing and recycling items from your home definitely plays a major role in eliminating or reducing your garbage output and the creation/requirement for packaging.
A few tips to contribute to the three R’s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle)
- Dropping a few eco-friendly pounds: Bring household items to your local consignment or thrift store, host a garage sale and sell them off or seek out community organizations in need of your unwanted things.
- Shopping Smart: Get a few reusable shopping bags and leave them in your car, at your workplace (in your office) or carry them with you (in your purse of bag) everyday. *They have some real compact styles these days. If you are more of a plastic bag kind of shopper – reuse them. They are not as sexy looking but do the trick.
- Create with Containers: I just started doing this myself – keeping all glass jars and certain plastic containers. Pickle and salsa jars are the best! My thought is I can use them for canning my own foods in the summer, holding my own flavoured oil and vinegar inventions or allow them to keep me organized in the garage ex. holds screws, nails etc.
Doing these items above initially takes a little bit of time but you will start to notice big changes fast including:
a less crowded home;
smaller loads at the end of your driveway [or trips to your garage chute] and;
savings in your pockets from not having to journey out to buy bag after bag, storage containers/jars or new things.
Looking to refurbish some of your own items rather than buying new? It is one of my absolute favourite Sunday afternoon past-times. Check out my Uses for Old Furniture & More.
pieceandquiet.ca 