By Daniela Gonzalez
Recycling household items can lead to a cleaner and greener environment. Recycling and reusing items can also help produce less trash that goes into landfills, ultimately harming our soil, air, and water.
Read these DIY upcycling tips and ideas from our experts and keep them close at hand. This way, you and your family stay busy and the planet cleaner.
How can we reduce food waste at home and slow down the climate change?
Urbanites can use food waste reduction methods to maximize the supply of food and to reduce waste and ecological degradation. City dwellers actually have abundant resources available to them to save food for future household consumption, to gather food for charity, and to compost food scraps. Means to save household food include efficient meal prep and meal planning, effective storage containers for leftovers, and preserving essential food items that can be stored in large quantities. Instead of designating food as simply waste, consider donating food to community food banks or local urban food recovery programs.
Daniel Braff from Green City Times™, LLC
What are the best eco-friendly cleaning products to use at home?
We believe in our entire eco-friendly Skoy product line. The Skoy Cloth is 100% biodegradable and compostable – why not use this instead of a regular sponge? This one product will save you money and the environment. As far as cleaning sprays, we suggest buying a concentrate to help eliminate bulk plastics!
Michelle Lundqvist from Skoy Enterprises LLC
What are some sustainable lifestyle aspects everyone can incorporate in their life?
When it comes to living a sustainable lifestyle, there is no one shortcut but it’s about a lifetime commitment to ourselves to take mindful decisions about how to inculcate a healthier relationship with ourselves and the planet. Here are some of the few ways by which we can create less negative impact on the environment.
Household- Remember the 3R’s. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Using products that fit the 3R’s will not only minimize waste but also impact the environment positively. Apart from that, techniques like Waste Management, Waste Segregation, Rainwater Harvesting can also help to produce minimum to zero waste.
Clothing- Adopting slow fashion by buying clothes that can last us for years can save so much of our money, time and resources.
Gifting- Giving sustainable or handmade gifts on birthdays, festivals and special occasions can often invigorate a warm sense of satisfaction in the end of the receiver.
Commuting- Walking or taking a bicycle ride for nominal distances can keep us healthy and our carbon footprint at bay.
Simar Mann from Sankalp Taru
Could you give us some tips on saving water at home and help the planet?
Make sure to close the tap when you complete using it.
Try to wash more clothes at once in the washing machine.
Use wastewater for plants.
Construct a soak pit to collect wastewater and increase the layer of groundwater.
Check for any pipe leak in your house.
Sanjay from Muzcorner
What are the best eco-friendly backyard planting and gardening tips?
Plant for pollinators! For butterflies, plant both nectar (food) and host plants (where they lay their eggs). Use only organic products and no chemical insecticides. Before long your yard will be full of beautiful pollinators!
Carol Clark Montgomery from Clark Gardens
How to recycle and reuse your toner cartridges to help the planet?
Toner cartridges can be refilled and remanufactured and almost every cartridge out there has a chip inside that allows it to work only once, so its components are useful for many purposes after the initial use is finished. Toner Cartridges contain plastic parts, metal parts, rubber parts, and plenty of empty space that can be used to store other useful materials.
If you have a printer at home or work, chances are you have some ink cartridges taking up space in your cabinet or closet. Inkjet cartridges may seem useless once the ink is dry and they may not be as expensive as toner cartridges, but they still contain plenty of recoverable resources. It is estimated that about 12 million inkjet cartridges are thrown into the garbage each year nationwide.
The fact is that every kind of printer cartridge can be remanufactured and recycled, but you need to do your research before throwing them away in the trash. Remanufacturing simply means taking all reusable parts out of one used cartridge and putting them into another, similar cartridge. Toner cartridges are remanufactured by companies that buy empty cartridges and replace their parts with new ones. Reprocessing is a slightly different process that involves taking all reusable components out of the old cartridge (such as plastic, metal and rubber) and making them available for future use.
Alberto Palumbi from Premium Toners
What are the best recommendations to recycle and handle household waste?
Understand what is in your trash that can be recycled, whether it cardboard, paper, plastics, metals, or textiles. Americans tend to recycle only 30% of our garbage! Talk with your curbside recycler or municipality to see which commodities they accept and any requirements for storage or hauling.
Lane Powell from Harmony Enterprises
What are the best steps to take towards sustainable shopping?
There are a number of steps one can take to ensure sustainable shopping. To start, try to be mindful of your actions at all times. Learn about the different types of waste that are generated and don’t make unnecessary purchases. Choose local produce instead of imported and always carry a sustainable shopping bag for the items you are buying. These small changes can help greatly, especially if they become habitual over time.
Megan Kioulafofski from Sol+Spirit
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