It's Easy To Be Green, Week 11

This is another installment of Lichterman Nature Center's twelve week It's Easy To Be Green program that MLGW employees are participating in. (We got a little behind as the grand finale of this program was Earthfest, which was held last Saturday at Lichterman.)

This week's theme is "Reduce & Reuse." An important step to reducing your impact on the environment is to reduce the amount of resources you consume and use. Remember, your goal is to reduce solid waste, so think about “resuables.” The ways in which you can reuse things are unlimited. All that’s needed is a little creativity.

Action Items

• Take a sturdy (and reusable) coffee mug to work rather than use disposable Styrofoam cups. A mug can be washed and used time and time again.

• Get printer and fax toner cartridges refilled when they are empty rather than thrown them away. This not only reduces waste in landfills but also saves you money.

• Look for “least waste” packaging. Consider the amount of product packaging when you shop. Some products are wrapped in many layers of plastic and cardboard even though they do not need to be. Choose items that use the minimum amount of packaging.

• Use rechargeable batteries to help reduce toxic metals in the garbage. An alternative is to purchase batteries with reduced toxic metal. Remember to dispose of them properly at the Memphis & Shelby County Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility.

• Avoid disposable, single use products. They end up in the landfill.

• Many newspapers and magazines are online. Instead of buying the paper version, you can read them online. Print only what you need.

• Coffee cans, shoeboxes, milk jugs, glass jars and other types of containers that we throw away can be used for storage—or they can become arts and crafts projects.

In the United States, we produce more trash per person than any other country in the world. More than one-third of that trash—paper, plastic, glass, metal, cardboard, and Styrofoam—come from packaging.