Recycling is nothing new. Dating back to the 1960s, recycling has been a key to cutting down on landfills, limiting pollution, and reusing limited resources. In fact, for every ton of cardboard recycled there are 9 cubic yards of landfill space saved. That’s incredibly important and benefits the entire Earth. Today, there are many things that shouldn’t be thrown in the garbage to avoid overflowing landfills and wasted resources, and a few are outlined below.
Compostable Foods
A recent trend is to compost foods and use compostable paper plates rather than single-use ones that are lined with plastic. Leftover food, banana peels, apple cores, and other similar products such as yard waste can be composted to great benefit, rather than simply thrown in the trash. The food scraps are then mixed with other things and then used as a sustainable mulch that doesn’t require chemicals to help plants grow and protect them from frost. This is a popular method with larger-scale farmers, both for its sustainability and its effectiveness.
Cell Phones
Many people don’t realize that cell phones and other similar electronic devices must be recycled. There are materials inside mobile devices that can be hazardous when thrown into the garbage. This includes arsenic and mercury, which can end up in the water table and result in ecosystem issues. Make sure to properly dispose of your electronics so they don’t end up in a landfill causing harm to the environment.
Ink Cartridges
With more people working from home than ever before, the reliance on a home office has grown in popularity. This means more people are using home printers, and going through ink cartridges than ever before. These aren’t traditional garbage, though. Rather, they should be recycled instead of thrown into any old dumpster. This is largely because remnants of printer ink can leak out of the cartridges and contribute to pollution in the surrounding environment. Similar to cellphones, runoff can carry think ink into neighboring waterways and make the water dirty, and animals that rely on that water may become sick. Because of this, it’s best to recycle ink cartridges before that can happen.
For many people, the issues that the earth faces in terms of environmental change can feel overwhelming, like there’s nothing that they can do to change the course of damage done to the environment. However, by doing small things, like separating recycling and garbage, you can contribute to the solution. It may be a small thing, but if everyone were to do things like taking proper trash removal methods seriously it will add up to making a large change.
