Trash-Free Living, Sustainable products for long term use

I've read a lot about sustainable living and how we can lower the impact we have on the environment. Time and time again my reading brings me back to garbage and landfill. How often do we consider the impact our rubbish is having on our environment?

We buy our food from supermarkets and it comes with all this packaging. We throw away what we don't need, the council arranges for our garbage to be collected, we pay our rates and thats that. But thats not all! All those pieces of rubbish that you've created and thrown away get piled up and stored. It becomes hazardous waste and it needs to be monitored to prevent contamination to the environment.

So what is the answer? I've read a few different things about what people are doing to prevent adding to landfill, Waste and Recycling Sustainability have some good ideas, while this article 'I have note made any trash in 2 years' was a really interesting read.

I suppose I see the answer as a lot of smaller changes happening over time. It starts with grocery stores helping you to re-use packaging so there is less and less need for plastic bags. This is followed by stores that only use recyclable containers and allow you to re-use your containers.

Making it easy for people to choose to recycle and avoid creating trash is going to be the best way to have this change accepted by everyone.

Now that I've started composting to assist my vegetable garden I can't believe how much I've thrown into the garbage heap over the years. I'm going to put a challenge to out there. Let's only buy products with recyclable packaging for the month of June.

I've been reading up other tips via Zero Waste Home and can't get enough! Making some real changes.

Day 61 of 366


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