Making Recycling Work at Home

In 1998, the average Lane County resident produced 7 pounds of garbage. This number dwarfs the national average of 4.4 pounds per day in 1993. Though recycling is a step in alleviating garbage excess, encouraging people to reduce, reuse and recycle remains a challenge. The solution to this challenge begins with individuals recycling in their homes. Recycling does not seem to fit into the hurried life of today's culture. How is a society that must combine driving, eating and talking on cell phones, supposed to find time and energy to sort through old cereal boxes and soup cans? In the good old days it was all so simple, people just threw everything away. While recycling has been around for some time now, the throw-it-all away mentality of the past still looms. It's time to get back to the basics and revisit our waste practices. Here are some ideas to make recycling work in your home:

1) The key is to make it convenient and non-burdensome.
2) Every bit makes a difference. Start with what you can and expand from there. Don't feel like you have to take on the world at once. Newspapers are the largest volume single consumer item in a landfill and easy to pile up for recycling.
3) Be creative with your collection and storage of recyclables. Rethink your waste stream and recognize that 70% of your household waste can be recycled. Focus on collecting recyclables while minimizing trash collection. There are many different ways to do it while utilizing tools that already exist in your home such as trash cans, buckets, etc...For example:

• Turn your home office waste can into a paper recycling container. Small containers are available that you can use for the minute amount of garbage you will be generating
• In your kitchen, keep a small dish wash tub next to the dish rack for recyclables coming from the kitchen. Small gallon buckets with lids are handy for storing compost. Then it is easy to move the small amount to your larger collection area as it fills up, while minimizing space use in your already crowded kitchen!
• Turn other waste generating areas into recycling collection areas with smaller trash containers for those few items that can't be recycled.
• Setup a place in the garage, where you can segregate recyclables. Look beyond the curbside recycling bin, as most families have outgrown it. Many stores now carry plastic/rubber bins for recycling which can either be stacked or placed next to each other. You'd be surprised how many options there are for in-home recycling collection. Just ask next time you are in a store with household items. There are many options that are available to accommodate your special recycling needs.

4) Don't forget to plan for recycling when you remodel or move into a new house. Incorporating recycling into your space can make it even simpler.
5) Reduce your waste to begin with. The amount of recycling and garbage produced by an individual can be reduced by PRECYCLING. When shopping, look for reduced packaged products and buy in bulk when you can. (Packaging accounts for 33% of the household waste stream.)

Remember to buy products made from recycled materials and are recyclable to insure that materials have a market to be recycled. Every little bit of recycling/waste reduction helps the greater cause of preserving our precious resources. Make waste reduction and recycling a way of life for now and the future.
All above statistics courtesy of (Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality)
Other statistics (from Weyerhaueser)

Environmental Savings From Recycling 1 ton of paper:

• 17 medium sized trees
• 6953 gallons of water
• 463 gallons of oil
• 586 pounds of air pollution
• 3 cubic yards of landfill space
• 4077 kwh of energy

Written by Dylan Darling, Pre-journalism major at the University of Oregon.
Dylan is currently working with the UO Campus Recycling Program.

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