Think Before You Trash: Eco-Friendly Waste Removal
When you throw your plastic bottle or paper cup into a trash can, you may not even give the blue bin beside it a second glance. In the United States alone, about 251 million tons gets hauled away to the landfill every year. A large percentage of that trash can be reused or recycled. You have to know what you’re throwing away to make sure what it is you’re putting in the trash can should actually be there.
Should that really go there?
Some items should not be in your trash can, like electronics, chemicals, paint and tires. Next time you’ve moved on to the newest electronic, stop by the nearest electronics retail store to see if it will recycle your used electronic for you. Most automobile dealerships and oil change centers will take your motor oil and other automotive fluids. Tire dealers will also accept and recycle your used tires.
To reduce some of the food waste going to the landfill and put it to better use, try composting. Compost is great natural fertilizer and it’s at no extra cost to you. Here’s how you compost:
- Collect all plant-based food scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, dryer sheets, vacuum cleaning contents, hair and grass clippings
- Mix above items with equal amounts of twigs and dead leaves
- Keep the mixture moist in a garbage can or similar container
- Keep the container in a shady area outside
- Stir the mixture a couple of times per week
- Have 100% organic compost within a few months
What about the big stuff?
Trying to dispose of a large amount of waste in an eco-friendly manner can be difficult. When you rent a dumpster for large waste removal, ask if the company offers trash recycling or clean load sorting. Hint: a clean load is when the dumpster is filled with only one type of material and not a mixture of items. If you can fill each dumpster with one type of material, that increases the odds that the material can be recycled instead of emptied into the landfill.
There are currently 86 landfills using waste to energy initiatives in the United States, where they use various methods to extract energy from the waste sitting at the landfill. One method is to capture methane gas naturally produced at landfills and turning it into energy. These waste to energy facilities turn 28 million tons of trash into about 2,720 megawatts of power every year. To give you a better idea, 164 homes can be powered by one megawatt of power… so that landfill power can light up almost 450,000 homes. So, our country is slowly trying to help sustain the environment, but we can’t reach our full potential until everyone, including you, becomes more conscious of what they are throwing away. And remember Bargain Dumpster is here to help. Give us a call today at (803) 573-0003
