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!

Hotels - Some Creative Ways Many Are Trying to Be Green

We checked with the Green Hotels Association and found out what some hotels are doing to “be green”. You might want to pass this list along when you travel this summer.

• Meeting and banquet facilities are using pourers for sugar, pitchers for cream and small serving dishes for butter and jellies instead of disposable packaging.

• A Toronto hotel is recycling stained tablecloths into napkins, chef's aprons and neckties.

• Bicycles are being loaned or rented to guests.

• Coins or chips are being used for car parking and coat checking instead of paper tickets.

• Hotels are making cloth laundry bags from retired sheets.

• Mowed landscaping is being replaced by ground cover. Lawnmowers are used less, so air pollution and noise are reduced.

• A Florida hotel bought a mulcher to chop up their garden clippings and create their own mulch. The mulcher paid for itself in three months.

• A Wisconsin B&B has installed beautiful blue floor tile made from recycled automobile windshields.

• Chief engineers have found that toilet tank fill diverters in older toilets save about 3/4 of a gallon of water per flush.

• A Pennsylvania property has a 400' garden and produces organically-grown vegetables for its restaurant.

• Restaurants and bars in hotels are using daylight exclusively for as much of each day as possible.

• Solar energy is lighting signage and heating water for hotels in tropical areas.

Don't be afraid to ask the place you are thinking of staying what they are doing to be green and help the environment. During your travels, if you see something a hotel is doing to “be green”, drop us a line!

How is an Aluminum Can Recycled?

One of the easiest and most popular ways to help the environment is to recycle. Do you purchase soda pop and other beverages in cans? Those cans are made with aluminum and can be recycled. Many of you already do that, but what happens after you throw that can into the recycling bin?

A Smashing Idea!

• Aluminum cans are picked up by your waste management company and then sent to large, regional scrap processing companies.


• There, they smash the cans to condense them into highly dense, 30-pound briquettes or 1,200-pound bales and ship them off to aluminum companies for melting.


• At the aluminum companies, the condensed cans are shredded, crushed and stripped of their inside and outside decorations using a burning process.

Hot, Hot, Hot!

• Then, the small, chip-sized pieces of aluminum are loaded into melting furnaces, where temperatures are over 12000 F. The recycled metal is blended with new, virgin aluminum.


• The molten aluminum is then poured into 25-foot long ingots that weigh over 30,000 pounds.


• These massive blocks of aluminum are fed into rolling mills that reduce the thickness of the metal from 20-plus inches to sheet that is about 10/1,000 of an inch thick.


• This metal is then coiled and shipped to can makers and other manufacturers who produce can bodies and lids.


• Cans are then shipped to beverage companies for filling.

The new cans are filled with your favorite drink and then ready to return to store shelves in as little as 60 days. And the cycle starts all over again!

Today most aluminum cans contain 40% post consumer recycled aluminum! And the great thing is that aluminum can be recycled over and over again.

(Process and statistics obtained from: http://www.aluminum.org)

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.

Recycling Cell Phones

If you are like most people, you upgrade your cell phone relatively often. This means you probably have a bunch of old cell phones sitting around in a drawer and you don't know what to do with them. There are definite recycling options for cell phones and one of our favorites is Cell for Cash. With their program you send in your old working cell phone and they will pay you a specified amount of cash based on the model of phone you are submitting. They will recycle your phone and you get paid. Now that is a way to Be Green and Save!

Check out the value of your current phone model here and see how you can recycle while making some extra cash for yourself in the process.

Even if your phone does not have cash value, the company will either repurpose your phone for an emergency 911 cellphone bank or it will recycle your non-working cell phones. Either way, you can't lose and you will prevent some damage to the environment by keeping the battery and electronic components out of a landfill.

For those of you who choose to participate - AWESOME JOB!

Keep checking our latest posts for more ways you can Be Green and Save!