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Operation Handbag: Recycle Everything in Your Purse

Most women are familiar with a situation like this – your purse filled to the brim with a whole lot of stuff you just don’t need. You can actually Do Your Part with nearly everything inside.

Are you inundated with receipts and business cards? Paper ones can be tossed right in the recycling bin. Thermal ones are a different story. They contain BPA which can contaminate other paper. Either throw them out or shred them to use as packing material. You can tell if your receipt is printed on thermal paper if it makes a mark when you scratch it.

Have old make up containers? Don’t trash them!  Origins will actually take back and recycle any make up container.  M.A.C. cosmetics will give you a free lipstick when you return six of their primary containers.

Who doesn’t have old pens in the bottom of their purse? Billions of these wind up in our landfills each year. They can be difficult to recycle.  Office Depot teams up with TerraCycle once a year to recycle them responsibly.

Then there are old gift cards and canceled credit cards. More than 70 million pounds of these are trashed each year. Recycle them instead.  The Earthworks organization is one place that can help you.

Have keys you no longer need? Metal is valuable and recyclable. Keys For Hope and Keys For Kindness are two organizations that collect unwanted keys for fund raising.

As the for your wallet and your purse itself? When you no longer use them – donate them.
See? No need to throw it all out. Do Your Part to find recycling solutions for everything you have stashed in there!

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Top 5 Ways Chemicals Sneak Into Your Home

Everyday we bring dangerous chemicals right into our homes. It could be from our shoes, a new piece of furniture we buy, or even the type of shower curtain we pick out. Here are ‘Terri’s Top 5 Ways Chemicals Sneak Into Your Home’ and the solutions you need to make a healthier home for you and your family.

1) Chemical Cleaners
One of the most common ways potentially toxic chemicals get into your home is when you use chemical-based cleaners. The scary thing is that their ingredients are not even required to be on the label. And, some of the chemicals they contain can pollute the air inside our homes and possibly cause all sorts of health problems – everything from asthma to allergies to reproductive issues.

What’s the Healthier Alternative?
Opt for non-toxic cleaners which you can either make or buy. Baking soda is a powerful all purpose cleaner. White vinegar is an all natural disinfectant and works wonders on most surfaces. Borax is also an effective mold killer. If you’d rather purchase a safer cleaner, look for those that are plant-based and fragrance free.

2) Furniture & Flooring
When we pick out a new piece of furniture or new carpet and flooring, we usually aren’t thinking of the gasses they may emit after they’re in our home. Some of those popular and affordable pieces made from medium density fiberboard – or MDF – actually contain a formaldehyde-based resin. And many popular choices of flooring emit formaldehyde or are secured to the floor with adhesives that do. At elevated levels, formaldehyde can irritate eyes and cause breathing problems.

What’s the Healthier Alternative?
When shopping, seek out furniture and flooring products labeled formaldehyde-free. Buying used, high quality wood furniture pieces are also a good bet because any dangerous chemicals have already been off-gassed.

3) Shoes & Paws
When you think about all the things you trek into your home with your shoes it can be downright disgusting! The same can be said for what’s on your pet’s paws. It’s not only dirt but also toxic debris such as lawn chemicals, automotive fluids, and pesticides. If you have young children in the home, they can easily be exposed to these toxins on the floor.

What’s the Healthier Alternative?
The easiest solution is to simply leave your shoes at the door. Also, having a large mat to wipe your feet and your pet’s paws is a smart idea. Have slippers or socks handy for use only inside your home. Also, consider wiping your pet’s paws with a reusable cloth when they come inside, especially after lawn treatments.

4) Problematic Plastics
There’s one type of plastic that actually releases harmful chemicals that accumulate in our bodies. It’s polyvinyl chloride – or PVC – and is used to make vinyl shower curtains, children’s toys, and food containers. These plastics are made soft and flexible with the use of plasticizers. Phthalates are a common plasticizer. Phthalates are easily released from plastics especially when heated. Phthalates are suspected of contributing to reproductive defects, premature births and impaired neurological development.

What’s the Healthier Alternative?
Start by avoiding plastics labeled with a #3 on the bottom. This identifies it as PVC. Also, seek out vinyl products that are labeled PVC-free. The U.S. now bans many dangerous phthalates in products for children under 12 but the ban took effect in 2009 and only for newly manufactured toys. This means there are still many children’s products that contain dangerous phthalates on store shelves. Look for newer items labeled PVC-free when shopping for younger children.

5) Dry Cleaning
If you bring home clothing from a traditional dry cleaner, you’re bringing in dangerous chemicals that can cause anything from headaches and breathing problems to more severe problems like liver and kidney damage. That’s because 80% of American dry cleaners use perchloroethylene (perc) as the cleaning agent. Perc is a manmade compound that pollutes our air, land and water.

What’s the Healthier Alternative?
If you visit the dry cleaner often, seek out ones which are perc-free. However, if there isn’t a green dry cleaner near you, make sure you unwrap you’re clothes once you’re home and let them air out before hanging them up in your closet.

By |Get Educated, Green Cleaning, Green Living, Head To Toe, In Your Home, Kids, Pets, Save Money & Resources, Terri's Top 5|0 Comments
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Charlotte's New Recycling Program

Charlotte has a new residential recycling program and you can Do Your Part by not only participating but by knowing all of the items you can now add to your 96 gallon recycling bin. You can still recycle all of the items you recycled before but here are some of the new items you can now recycle.

All aerosol cans can now be recycled along with milk cartons and juice boxes. All of those wax-coated paper products we could not recycle before can all be recycled now. And here’s the biggie: plastics. Most plastics can now be recycled. Anything plastic has a number on the bottom of it. All plastics from 1-7 can now be recycled except for plastic labeled number 6.

Other items that can’t be recycled include plastic caps. You need to remove those from all the plastic containers you put in your can. You also can’t recycled pizza boxes, paper towels, or napkins. Any products with food residue on them won’t be accepted. And again, no number 6 plastics which include Styrofoam.

And finally, roll your bin to the curb and don’t leave it on the sidewalk. Leave a few feet between it and your garbage bin to make it easier to pick up. If you’re not sure when your delivery date is you can go online to recycleit.charlottenc.gov or call 311 to find out. Lastly, if you’re not sure what to do with your old red bin, you can use it to collect your recyclables throughout the week or you can Do Your Part and recycle that too!

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Reduce Your Eco-Footprint

One of the simplest ways to Do Your Part is to reduce! You can reduce amount of energy you use, the water you waste and the toxic chemicals you bring into your home.

When you reduce, you conserve natural resources and create less air, land and water pollution. And you’ll lower your eco-footprint and save money too.

Using less energy is a big one. Start by weatherizing your home. Seal up gaps to make sure the warm or cool air does not escape. Opt for energy saving solutions in your home like a programmable thermostat, LED lighting, Energy Star-rated appliances and power strips that will kill the phantom load of electronics and chargers that sip power even when they aren’t in use.

Using less water is easy. Install low flow toilets and fixtures, turn off tap while you brush, lather or shave. Outside use your irrigation system only when needed, use a spray nozzle on every hose and incorporate native plants in your yard which naturally require less water.

It’s also important to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals in and around your home that ultimately end up in our environment. Use eco-friendly cleaners, paints and thinners with no volatile organic compounds or VOCS and limit the use of particle board that can release formaldehyde into your home.

Look for other ways to reduce your eco-footprint at DoYourPart.com. And remember when you reduce, you’ll start saving money too.

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The Never-Ending Glass Recycling Story

Recycling glass is another super easy way to Do Your Part. It’s as close to instant gratification as you can get in the recycling world. A recycled glass bottle can be back on a store shelf in as little as 30 days and can be recycled over and over again!

Think about the glass that’s in your kitchen right now. Glass jars hold jelly, baby food, spices, drinks, sauces, pickles, oils and a whole lot more. It only takes a moment to rinse them out and recycle them.

Remember to take the lids off because they can jam the recycling machinery.

Recycled glass is all around us. You can find it in fiberglass insulation, concrete, matches, highway reflective paint and ceramic tiles.

Creating glass from scratch requires sand, soda ash and limestone to be heated to 2600 degrees. Making glass from recycled glass uses 40% less energy because the glass melts at a much lower temperature. So recycle all of those glass jars and bottles. You’ll be doing your part to conserve energy and cut down on pollution.

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Start Simply At Home

One of the easiest and most effective ways for each of us to do our part is to recycle. Recycling conserves natural resources, reduces waste sent to the landfill and cuts down on the amount of pollution in our air, land and water. It seems so easy and it is! Up to 75% of the waste we generate in our homes is recyclable but right now less than 35% of it is actually being recycled so we can do a better job. If you recycle already, good for you! We’ve got some tips to show you how you can do an even better job. If you don’t recycle at home, now is the time to get started!

Lets start with making easy. Most of us keep our recycling bins outside which isn’t always convenient. Put smaller containers throughout your home to serve as recycling bins. Reuse a box or another trash can for recycling items. That way everything from the paperboard boxes to shampoo bottles makes it to the bigger bin! These things may seem too little to bother with but they really add up! Check all plastic containers for the little number on the bottom and know which ones are accepted where you live. Check our Earth 911 recycling link in our Local Green Guide to find out which ones you can recycle where you live.

Recycling aluminum and glass is an obvious one. But did you know that they can be made into other cans and bottles over and over again! Besides saving natural resources it requires much less energy to make these containers out of recycled material than virgin material.

Try to think outside of the box for paper recycling. It’s the number one thing filling up our landfills. All those magazines you have around the house can go right in the recycling bin. So can junk mail, telephone books and — here’s a big one — all packaging and cardboard boxes can be recycled as long as they don’t have any food residue on them.

So Do Your Part everyday and recycle. It’s the easiest way for each one of us to preserve our planets natural resources and keep tons of pollution out of our air, land and water every day.

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Recycling A Can, Can Make a Difference

It just makes sense to recycle those aluminum cans we all use nearly every day!

First off, it just couldn’t be simpler. After you drink your favorite beverage, you toss it in recycling bin. But the coolest part is what happens to it after that!

These valuables cans are hauled off to a recycling center. Who knows how many times they’ve been there before because aluminum cans can be recycled forever! Yes — forever! Not only that, recycling an aluminum can saves 95% of the energy that’s used to make a brand new can from virgin materials.

Here’s how that affects all of us. The energy saved by recycling just one can can actually power a TV for three hours. The energy saved by making cans with recycled materials could light Washington, DC for nearly 4 years. And, recycling aluminum creates 97% less water pollution than creating a can from scratch.

Could it get any better? Yes!

Aluminum is the one recycled product that not only pays for itself; it also helps pay for the collection of all the other recyclables in your bin including the paper, plastics and glass. That’s because it’s the most valuable. The cans typically make up 20% of what is in everyone’s recycling bin but they generate 70% of the total value of what’s in the bin.

Each American uses roughly 400 aluminum cans each year. Right now, a little more than half make it back to a recycling center. The rest are just filling up our landfills. It only takes 60 days for a recycled can to make it back to a store shelf and the benefits are phenomenal.

So Do Your Part and make sure you try to buy beverages in aluminum cans instead of plastic ones and make sure every can ends up in a recycling bin.

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Recycling Paper Is A Success

Paper has quietly become on of the biggest recycling success stories in the United States. In 2007, 56% of all the paper discarded in the United States was recycled. Why? Because the paper industry itself promotes recycling and recognizes that it just makes sense.

Even when you account for the energy required to collect and process paper for recycling; it still takes less water and 40% less energy to make paper from recycled materials rather than virgin materials. And there is plenty of paper to recycle! Look at all the paper around your home: newspapers, junk mail, catalogs, phone books, school papers, bill inserts and envelopes. Paperboard is another paper product that’s recyclable. This is the thin cardboard like packaging that we buy so many products in. All that cardboard is recyclable too. Any paper or cardboard product without food on it is recyclable — that’s why you can’t recycle pizza boxes.

Paper that’s recycled is fluffed and sifted to remove heavier cardboard items. The paper is then bundled and sent to paper mills or immediately processed into cellulose insulation right here in the recycling facility. In one-hours-time a bale of insulation is made from paper dumped from the recycling truck.

The success of paper recycling is also driven by the growing demand to buy recycled paper products. From insulation to printer paper; look for the recycling symbol. And if you want to support your recycling efforts buy the highest post consumer content. That’s the paper we recycle — not paper scraps from the factory floor.

Recycling paper is easy and making products from recycled paper requires less water and energy. When we conserve energy we also create less air pollution. So Do Your Part to recycle all of your paper products and buy recycled paper products when you can. You’ll be doing your part to reduce, reuse and recycle.

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What Do You Do With Old Or Unused Medicine?

Most of us will get a few prescriptions a year or one of our family members might.  It’s important to Do Your Part with the leftover medicine because Americans go through close to 4 billion prescriptions each year.

What you don’t want to do is flush any drugs down the toilet unless the drug label or patient information specifically instructs you to do so.  That’s because it can contaminate the drinking water and even harm eco-systems.

Most drugs can be thrown in the trash. But you should take certain precautions first.  Take the drugs out of the container.  Peel the label off the bottle to protect your personal information. Recycle the bottle if your local program takes that number plastic.  Mix the drugs with something undesirable like kitty litter or coffee grounds. This way the medication will appear less desirable to children and pets.  Put the drugs in a sealed bag and put it in the garbage can.

So Do Your Part the next time you have leftover medicine.  It’s another way to help keep our environment as healthy as possible.

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Recycling Plastic

Plastics are everywhere and much of it is recyclable. I recently visited the Metrolina Recycling Center in Charlotte. This facility processes 16 one-thousand-pound bales of plastics everyday.

Recycled plastics can be made into lots of products including new plastics, apparel, lumber and carpeting. Paul O’Donnell, Director of Commodities for FCR, tells us what happens to the plastic processed at the Metrolina Recycling Center. He says, “once it leaves here it goes through another processing where it’s ground up, washed, pelletized and then brought into the new products.”

Recycling keeps plastic out of the landfill but there is also an economic benefit to recycling plastic. “It’s created a whole new industry set up to use this material. There’s the whole environmental issues, the sustainability issue and it just doesn’t make sense to bury this stuff in the ground when it can be used as raw material in other industries,” according to O’Donnell.

Right now, Americans only recycle 5% of the plastics produced in this country and up until recently that was partly because is was less expensive to make plastic from virgin material rather than recycled material. With the current price of crude oil, from which plastic is made, that’s no longer true. Recycling plastic is a profitable business but as Geoff Burdick, Project Manager for Charlotte Mecklenburg Solid Waste Services tells us, it’s not just about the money.

“Our current landfill in the south end of the county has about 23 years left in it and trying to get a new landfill sited with the State restructuring, it takes an act of God to make that happen. Although its in the future, we should think about it now because in 23 years we’re not going to have any where to put our trash,” Burdick said.

So Do Your Part by recycling all of the plastic you can and by buying products made from recycled plastic. Learn what kinds of plastics your local recycler will accept by clicking here.

To Learn More Visit:
American Chemistry Council: Recycled Plastic Products Directory
US Energy Information Administration
Earth911.org

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