A few changes in our daily lives can really make a difference to the environment and help save the world! Since the industrial revolution, we have invented some many things that make ours lives easier, but unfortunately not all these things are so good for the environment, things like plastic bags, disposable cups, and old discarded tires, to name a few.

Americans throw away something like 100 billion plastic bags a year. That’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the worldwide number – an estimated one trillion plastic bags a year. A maximum of 3% of this number is recycled.

Plastic bags that are thrown away are likely to end up on a landfill site or as general litter, clog waterways or strangle and suffocate small mammals. Worst of all, plastic bags are not biodegradable and take up to 1000 years to break down and even then these particles will continue to pollute soil and water.

How hard is it really, to carry an extra few bags with you every time you go shopping? Or you could get a few bags-for-life, which come in a variety of styles and materials, often easily foldable to put in your pocket.

Also for all those plastic bags, you might have hanging around at home, you can now to them to your local supermarket and get them recycled. If your local supermarket doesn’t have a facility, contact your local community recycling program to see where and how you can recycle plastics bags.

Do you stop off for a coffee on the way to, or on the way home from, work? Do you use a disposable paper cup? When you throw the cup away is the waste bin overflowing? Starbucks offer a 10% discount to people who bring their own mugs and in 2004 this initiative, prevented 655,000 tons of waste reaching the landfill sites. So pick up a mug from home and help save the environment!

Lastly, what happens to the old tires of your vehicle when you need to replace them? Do they end up as waste? Hundreds of millions of tires end up on landfills or illegally dumped.

Did you know that if you go to a place that recycles your tires, your tire could be reused as fuel, used in civil engineering projects, be made into a cut or stamped product, or even converted into rubber mulch that you can use in your garden. Anyone of these options is better than the tire ending up on a landfill site.

Making a conscious effort do these things will help the environment, why not show the world of your good environmental intentions by using brightly colored rubber mulch in your garden? Rubber mulch will also save you a considerable amount of work too.

http://www.rubberecycle.com

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 9:38 am and is filed under Environment, Recycle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.