With so many different people telling you what can and can’t be recycled, I felt like this was a good opportunity to research more specifically what you can and cannot do in order to place a product in the recycling bin.

Suprise, suprise….. there are rules for everything! Think placing your trash in recycling is “doing your part”, sadly you would be wrong. Like I have said in a few of my other blogs, not everything in recycling CAN be recycled.

1. The first thing you can do is to look for that little number in the middle of that triangular shape (usually located on the bottom). That number is actually telling you what type of plastic it is. Depending on your area, different recycling centers take different plastics, so check with your local city to see what types of products and plastics they will accept. If you use the curbside recycling here in Conway, they only take #1 or #2 plastics, amongst other types of materials. Still confused as to what I am talking about….? See the image below…
2. So now that you know what grade of plastic can be recycled in your area, lets go over a few mind boggling rules that are required for this plastic product to ACTUALLY be considered for recycling.

Rules:

1.Not all plastics are the same

This meaning that different plastics are made of completely different things. Most plastics originate from crude oil, unless it is marked with PLA. There are two specific types of plastic however, thermosest vs. thermoplastics.  Thermoplastics are plastics that can be re-melted and re-molded into new products, and therefore, recycled. However, thermoset plastics “contain polymers that cross-link to form an irreversible chemical bond,” meaning that no matter how much heat you apply, they cannot be remelted into new material and hence, non-recyclable.

2. You can’t recycle dirty plastic

I don’t know how to stress this enough, but YES you have to wash ALL food residue off, or it WILL NOT be able to be recycled. If you cannot clean it off (like a cardboard pizza box with some melted cheese and sauce on it) it can’t be recycled. (You could composit it though!!) In order for plastics to be used and turned into a new good, it MUST be in decent quality.

3. Recycling plastic downgrades its quality

The same piece of plastic can only be recycled about 2-3 times before its quality decreases to the point where it can no longer be used. This is due to the polymers chain continuously getting shorter each time it gets recycled. Each time plastic gets recycled, ‘virgin’ material is added to the product to increase the quality. This is to make it more durable and competitive when placed back on the market with new goods. So when you see a product that says it is made of recyled mateial, this is really what it means. So keep that in mind when you consider what makes one product better than another.

Although there are more rules I could tell ya, I think this is enough for this blog. Look out for more tips and information to come!

When we know better, we DO better.

One fun thing that I came across on Facebook while I procrastinated all of my work, was that Crayola has a program where they recycle all of their old “dead” colored markers! I never even thought about how something silly as a dried up marker can add to our landfill. Crayola’s program is called ColorCyle, and they accept all brands of plastic markers, not just Crayola.

This can range from dry erase markers, highlighters, and of course regular colored markers. If you decide to collect your ‘tomb’ of dead markers, they will actually send you a free shipping label and you can ship them back to Crayola to be recycled!

Think about how much accumulation of these a daycare or preschool collects. I bet the amount is huge. I am assuming most of you, as well as myself, don’t come in contact with too many markers or dead ones now-a-days. But my point in the matter is by allowing some time to research little things like this, you can find some simple opportunites that can allow you to seriously help save the planet, just Google or research it! You never know what you’re gunna learn or find.

If you are interested in using Crayola’s program, click here to be directed to their website.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has been reading my blogs and trying to decrease some single use and plastic waste. It is a slow and steady process that is never easy. I still struggle so much because of how readily available single use plastics are nowadays. So if you are getting overwhelmed or frustrated, just remember…

“The people that make the biggest difference are the ones who do the little things consistently.”

Here is a visual explaination of how small changes can really make such a huge difference. Change starts with all of us. So stay motivated to keep this Earth beautiful.

Something that has been on my mind is that some plastic is re-usable, we use tubberware to hold our left-overs and lunches. If we re-use it, what’s the harm? So of course, I had to do some research and hope to educate others in reasonings behind why switching from plastics to glass-ware and containers is the best option.

1.Glass containers are known to be safer

Knowing that switching to glass storage containers is a safer option is a big motivator for me, as I don’t want any food I prepare for myself or others to potentially cause any harm. I want my home to be safe and healthy. Most plastics, even BPA-free ones, can leach chemicals into our food when heated.

2.Glass can best retain food’s natural flavors

Have you ever warmed up food in a plastic storage container and then felt the food tasted like…… plastic? Yeah same. With glass, there is nothing to leach into your food, so it retains natural flavors!

3.Glass just holds up better in the long run

Yeah, glass containers will break more easily if you drop them, so they will require a bit of care, but if you don’t drop them they actually hold up so much better in the long-run! I don’t know if any of y’all have noticed that when you leave pasta sauce in plastic, it can leave a red residue that seems to never look clean even though it is?! This won’t happen when you store your food in glass containers!

4.Glass containers are better for the environment

Like I have earlier said in some of my blogs, plastic can be recycled, but each time it has been recycled it loses more of its quality. So plastic is usually “downcycled” into a product that has much less quality than the original state the plastic was in. Then, the plastic is usually no longer recyclable and still ends up in a landfill or ocean. This is not the case with glass. Glass can continuously be recycled and made into new things over and over indefinitely without any loss in quality.

I bet a majority of you guys have heard this straw fad that has been going around, and the impact that it is having on our sea life, but do you really know what straws are doing to this planet? Something so minusucle is having such a poor impact on our planet is astounding to me!

I don’t know about you, but I am so tired of seeing other species and our environment directly affected by our choices. Even if you are a concious consumer and try to live low waste, do you actually know how much trash that you are producing? The average American produces 4.7 pounds of trash a day. That is 1,700 pounds a year per individual! For straws, the estimation of use per day is over 500 million in America alone.

Some may wonder why straws aren’t getting recycled, but most plastic straws are too lightweight to make it through the mechanical recycling sorter. They drop through sorting screens and mix with other materials and are too small to separate, contaminating recycling loads or getting disposed as garbage.

This is a huge problem that is destructing our sea life and environment. Something so silly and little as a straw! Find a re-usable one or just refuse it and drink from the cup. Yeah it may be a bit inconvient, but saving sea life is so much more important (to me at least, and hopefully you!). If one hundred people said no to using a straw just once, that small impact alone can be so beneficial.

I choose to know what is going on in our environment, and make small steady changes to help make an impact in a positive way, and I hope you all do too. Because this Earth is too beautiful and precious to be treated this way.

Next time you find yourself unsure of what to watch next on Netflix, check out some amazing documentaires about being sustainable. I personally recommend all three of these. They can help change some perspectives but also give us more motivation to keep pushing towards a more sustainable life.

Chasing Coral

Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.

Chasing Coral is a film directed by Jeff Orlowski and produced by Larissa Rhodes, as an Exposure Labs production. It was filmed over three years, with 500+ hours underwater, includes footage from over 30 countries, and was made with the support of over 500 people around the world.

The True Cost

This is a story about clothing. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The True Cost is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?

Filmed in countries all over the world, from the brightest runways to the darkest slums, and featuring interviews with the world’s leading influencers including Stella McCartney, Livia Firth and Vandana Shiva, The True Cost is an unprecedented project that invites us on an eye opening journey around the world and into the lives of the many people and places behind our clothes.

Minimalism: A Documentary about the Important Things

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things examines the many flavors of minimalism by taking the audience inside the lives of minimalists from all walks of life—families, entrepreneurs, architects, artists, journalists, scientists, and even a formerWall Street broker—all of whom are striving to live a meaningful life with less. After its successful theatrical run, Minimalism, the #1 indie documentary of 2016 (largest box-office opening), is finally available online.

So if you couldn’t tell by the title, we are gunna be talking about plastic bags! As someone (me) who seems to acquire them so frequently and stashes a pile to be used for trash bags, they still seem to pile up so fast. And thats because it is! An average American family will actually take home about 1500 plastic bags a year. If this doesn’t sound too intimidating to you, according to Waste Management, only 1 percent of plastic bags are returned for recycling. That means that the average family only recycles 15 bags a year; the rest ends up in landfills as litter.

I’m not saying if you use plastic bags, you are a terrible person. I even use some plastic bags as well. But there are some simplier alternatives you could make in your life to impact the world in a huge way. For example, we have all seen and heard of the re-usable bags that have been around for a while. That is always a very effective way to eliminate a problem. But sometimes it’s not that easy. Something else you could do to start, is set aside a seperate pile of all your plastic bags to be returned to a recycler.

A lot of people do not realize that plastic bags cannot be recyled in your curbside bin at home. It has to be taken to a drop-off location, like a grocery or other retail store, to be collected for recycling. Most curbside recycing do not have the correct machines to properly recycle plastic bags. The best and most efficient way to help is taking them to your local super market. In every grocery store I have set foot in around the Conway area, I have always seen a bin set up in the entrance where you can place your bags. You can also include plastic films in your plastic bag collection, for example:

• Produce bags
• Dry cleaning bags
• The wrap around paper towels and diapers
• Etc.

Its all about the little decisons we can start to make now, that can significantly make a difference in the future. I know it is intimidating, but let’s start slow and small. Let’s be better together. A very wise man once said….

I feel like the bathroom is one place where a large number of waste is produced. I could dive into so many alternatives available to reduce your waste in the bathroom, but I honestly wanted to do a fun one this time. My goal is to bring in something cool and new that most of y’all hopefully haven’t heard or thought of before.

Let’s talk about toothbrushes and toothpaste. So apparently toothbrushes are another plastic that gets lost in the recycling process, so chances are its gunna end up in the landfill amongst everything else. And once in a landfill, the toothbrush, made of polypropylene plastic and nylon will not break down, and worse can reach rivers or even the sea. (We gotta save those turtles!)  The packaging used for oral care products are manufactured to last essentially forever. Yet a typical household can throw away one or more empty tubes a month. There are also various components comprised in the typical toothpaste tube which can include any number of plastics, aluminum, steel and even nylon. For the tube to be recycled, each component in the tube must be processed seperately. And on top of the CO2 pollution involved in the production of each and every tube you buy, it then becomes a VERY complex process for recyclers.

As a result, it has inspired innovative eco alternatives including bamboo-made brushes, some with a handles made from recycled yoghurt pots and bristles made from pig hair. As for the toothpaste tubes, there are multiple altervatives to reduce waste in this area too. While you can always make your own toothpaste, one of my favorite alternatives I have come across so far are the toothpaste tablets.

A company called Bite has made a healthier, all-natural plastic free replacement for the paste we have been using our entire lives. So what you do is pop the tablet into your mouth, bite down and brush with a wet toothbrush as you would commercial toothpaste. Pretty neat concept, and it is supposed to foam up just like your common toothpaste would.

Let’s leave this planet better than how we found it, so take some of this information into consideration when you are out thinking of shopping for your next plastic purchase, and consider some alternatives to help our environment instead.

One easy way that we can start reducing our impact on this planet is by the clothes we wear! By reusing clothing or going to stores that sell repurposed or re-sell items are not only saving room in landfills, but reducing the possible greenhouse gasses that are emitted into the air when fabrics finally do begin to decompose.

I honestly already LOVE thrift shopping, and being a college student has helped this transition into checking out consignment stores. But it not only can help reduce the impact on the environment but in my personal opinion, can give you a thrill as well. I can’t explain the satifaction of finding an awesome piece of clothing at a reasonable price. So try it out for yourself if you haven’t done so. Visiting these stores will allow the clothing items to have a new purpose and prolong its life-span.

So lets go back to what happens to old clothing if you decide to just toss this undesired article out. By doing this, you not only have wasted the material itself, but wasted any energy and water that was used to manufacture it.
Most textiles can be repurposed and the benefit of taking the time to recycle those items far outweighs the small inconvenience of putting such items aside for recycling or tossing in the trash. Fresh water is a dwindling resource and energy use contributes to global warming, one the biggest environmental problem of our times. So maybe what we need to be doing is put these old pieces to a new use. Whether it is using it as an old rag, re-designing it into something more fashionable, or donating it for someone else to reuse can seriously help the impact we leave on this environment.

Many items in your home can be recycled. For instance, old shoes, wallets, belts, purses, backpacks, hard toys, stuffed animals, caps and hats can be recycled as well as old clothes. So keep in mind what you are going to just toss out, because it may could find itself a new use.