Recycling Household Items for Charity

Here are a couple more thoughts on what to do with your trash or household items you wish to dispose of.

Consider donation, it's the ultimate recycling and reusing:

Old books can go to libraries, nursing homes, preschools, or various charity book collections.

Clothing can go to charity organizations such as Goodwill, Salvation Army, women's shelters, and charity resale shops. You can do the same with some children's toys and baby equipment such as strollers, cribs, toys, etc.

Furniture you no longer want can go to charity organizations as well. Consider those that resell those items or those that provide the items directly to people who are financially in need or are disaster victims.

If you just get a bit creative you will probably find many ways to recycle or reuse many of your household items. Our next post will consider ways you can make money off of items you no longer need. In the meantime, feel free to drop us a note if you have more ideas to add to this list.

How to Dispose of Trash Without Using Plastic Bags

We had a great question from one of our readers, Midlife Traveller, who is using reusable shopping bags but wonders now how to handle the trash without using plastic bags. This is not as easy an answer as the shopping bags, but here are some possible suggestions:

Separate your trash and recycle as much as possible. Check with your trash disposal service and find out exactly what items they will recycle. There may be more recycling options than you realize. Also check with the municipality where you live to see if they have any separate recycling programs available for additional items.

Consider composting food wastes, paper, and other organically based products. Composting is a much easier proposition today than it used to be and there are several great composters on the market that can make the job easier and relatively clean. See the example we have outlined below. You can use biodegradable trash bags in the trash containers you are using for any items you are going to compost.

What remains of your trash should actually be fairly minimal. Items such as meat products you may want to use a food waste disposer or you may need to use a plastic trash bag for these items, as they are not compostable. Other non-recyclables I would just put directly into a trash can for pick-up, no bag needed.

This type of trash system will obviously take a bit of effort on your part, but will greatly reduce the amount of trash going to the landfills, will increase the amount of items going to the recycling plants, and will provide you with some rich, organic compost to fertilize your gardens. There are obviously many benefits to making the extra effort.

Here is a great little compost bin you may want to consider:

The Envirocycle Composter
Make your own compost!

Envirocycle has created this composter which produces quality compost and compost tea quickly and easily. It’s user-friendly, eliminates mess and odor, and is compact making it perfect for those with limited space.
Envirocycle Simplifies Composting

The Envirocycle composter is specifically designed to simplify the recycling of kitchen and garden refuse. It produces quality compost more quickly and easily than conventional composters by its rolling and mixing action which keeps the ingredients well mixed and aerated.

Makes Rich Compost Tea

This enviro cycle unit also makes compost tea, a rich organic liquid plant food appreciated by gardeners everywhere. Use it on your house plants, outdoor plants, flowers, trees, shrubs, garden and lawn.

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You may also want to consider biodegradable trash bags. These should only be used when the trash will be composted, as, like any other plastic bag, they will not break down in a sealed environment such as a landfill.

The bags shown below are for pet waste, but they are also available in other sizes for use in the home.

Biodegradable and Compostable
These BioBag Pet Waste Bags are 100% Biodegradable and 100% Compostable. BioBags help to make cleaning up after Fido a little more earth friendly. Made from cornstarch, these bags help to eliminate regular plastic bags from our environment. When disposed, BioBags will biodegrade as naturally as food scraps, leaving no harmful residue.

No Polyethylene
No Polyethylene is used in the production of this product. BioBags are GMO free, certified for use in organic agriculture, yet are shelf stable – just like paper towels.

Contains 50 full-sized bags
Measure 11.5” high x 7.8” wide (Large enough for even big Fido’s!)

Click Here

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Let us know if you have any additional ideas for environmentally friendly waste disposal. The best way to make things better is the free exchange of ideas!

Ways to Improve the Environmental Friendliness of Your Business

Face it; it is easy to waste items at work and to not think about reducing, reusing, recycling, repurposing or regenerating resources. However, maintaining an environmentally friendly business helps your bottom line as well as the environment. So what can you do to improve the green at your place of business?

First, see that policies are put in place which encourages reducing, reusing and recycling.

Maximize energy efficiency. Turn down the heat or up the air conditioning by a couple of degrees. Be sure all windows and doors are insulated. Use energy efficient light bulbs. Turn equipment and machinery off when appropriate.

Reduce your water usage. Install displacement toilet dams in toilet reservoirs. Stop leaky faucets as soon as they are spotted.

Recycle, recycle. Have specially marked bins for recycling to collect paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, plastics and ink cartridges.

Keep the “e” in e-mail. Don’t print off an e-mail unless it is absolutely necessary.

Check with your suppliers and see if they take back packaging and reuse it.

Look for a supply of paper with maximum recycled content.

Ask all of your suppliers to let you know what “green” policies and practices they have in place. If they don’t have any, look for another supplier.

Reduce paper usage by producing double sided documents. Reuse padded envelops.

Buy more environmentally friendly vehicles.

Putting just a few of these in practice will help you to “Be Green and Save”!

Green Furniture?

Go Green! is a phrase thrown around a lot in the conservationist/environmentalists world. But what does that mean? A very simple explanation is putting in place practices that reduce the impact to the environment. Everything has an impact, so is what you are doing have a positive impact or a less negative impact than another practice?

Let’s look at furniture. Green Furniture, you say!? And no, we are talking about the color of furniture. What are some things to consider that would classify furniture as green? Here are some of the ideas we have come across.

• Are the materials the furniture is made of recycled or recyclable? Lots of furniture is now being made with recyclable plastics and metals.
• Is the furniture made from sustainable wood sources?
• Bamboo is an excellent green material. It grows fast, most growers do not use pesticides and the grass is amazingly versatile. However, most is grown in China, so is not a local product for most people and therefore loses some points in the green category.
• Second hand furniture. Do you have a piece of furniture that has been passed down through the generations? Have you picked up items at a garage sale or auction. A piece of furniture that has lasted a long time and has not been put in the trash pile is definitely a green piece of furniture.

Some stores and marketers are now providing “green” benefits of their products. Next time you are shopping, be sure to ask.

Earth Day Becomes Earth Year - Recycle, Reuse, Reduce, and Save Money

This Sunday, April 22nd, is Earth Day. There are many things you as an individual can do to reuse items, reduce the use of energy and resources, recycle goods, and repurpose items. We’ll give you a few examples in this post, but we would also like you to think about Earth Day as another type of New Year’s Day. Make some ecologically based resolutions to follow for the next “Earth Year.” Leave us a comment to let us know what resolutions you have come up with.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Use reusable cloth sacks when you go shopping instead of plastic shopping bags.
Here are a couple of great sources we found for totes:


Foldable Wheeled Tote

This foldable wheeled tote is constructed of durable rip stop nylon polyester. Durable inline ball bearing roller skate wheels fold for convenient storage. Features a front net pocket and side net pocket for additional storage. Detachable coin pocket, as well as rear zipper pocket for personal items. Heavy duty nickel plated zipper, and convenient adjustable handle straps. A great way to get everything home easily!

Organize.com offers a variety 13 1/2"tall (without straps) x 17 1/2"wide fabric totes at great prices. Here are a couple of examples:




2. Recycle your unused cell phones.
You can recycle your old cell phone and possibly even make some cash. You can check out the details here. You can also read more about this topic in our previous post Recycling Cell Phones.

3. Reset all of your light timers.
With the time change and the seasons changing, you may not need automatic timers to be set to turn on as early.

4. Turn off the water when you brush your teeth.
Sounds simple but it can save quite a bit of water over time.

5. Replace some of your incandescent lightbulbs with low mercury, compact fluorescent bulbs.
They use about two-thirds less energy and last from 5-7 years. You will save energy and money. You can't beat that!

Happy Earth Year! Check back with us soon for more great earth friendly ideas. You may want to sign up for our RSS feed so you won't miss a single post.

Welcome to Be Green and Save

Welcome to Be Green and Save. We will be talking about ways to find, purchase, and use environmentally friendly products and services (Be Green) and at the same time help save resources, time, money, and the planet (and Save). It’s a win-win proposition for everyone.

Check back with our site often for loads of great information and please leave your comments and questions. We want to hear what you have to say!

Once again, welcome and we hope you enjoy the site!