As many of you know, I try to cut our everyday living cost as much as possible. This includes everything in our life. My latest project has been our trash. My next door neighbor asked if we would be interested in sharing a trash service. She would cancel her trash service and we would use just ours. We would then split our trash bill in half with them.
My first thoughts was that there was no way we could do this. I have a family of 6 and she has a family of 4. This would be 10 people's trash into one tiny trash can. Yikes. We rarely ever filled our trash but our recycling bin was always over filled. Well we decided to try it out and boy am I glad we did.
Here is how we do this.
-All food scraps are put into our compost. Anything but meat and dairy. I do not like waste so the only thing that usually ends up in our compost is fruit peelings, veggie peels, and egg shells.
-Plastics are in a separate container now. I keep 2 brown paper bags in my home. 1 for any type of thin plastic wrappings. Bread bags, plastic wrap around packages, etc. The other bag is for all other plastic. Yogurt containers, milk lids, plastic hangers, etc. You get the idea. Every few months my neighbor will take these in to get recycled for free. Yes there is a option to do this, you just need to take advantage of it.
-Anything that can be recycled is. Any paper, cardboard, cans, milk cartons, etc. Its all put in recycling.
-Anything that cannot be recycled is put in the trash. Let me say that there is very little that is not recycled. Styrofoam (we do not have this service yet), thrown out dairy(rarely if never) and things like that.
There are a few things that have helped us reach our goal and have taught us. Having a wonderful neighbor has helped out. Anything I have a question about or she has about, we talk to each other. We figure out ways to recycle it or reuse it.
We keep 2 options in each bathroom and kitchen. 1 bag for recycling items, and the other is a trash can. Once a month these are taken out and put in the appropriate places.
Added bonus!
Not only is this helping us recycle and keep our footprint small but this saves us 50% off our garbage bill. May not seem like much but it will add up to over $100 each year we save by doing this. I rarely have to take trash out anymore, what a huge bonus! Also it has taught us as a family to be kinder to this earth and try our best not to leave a footprint on it. Its also taught us to reuse anything we can. Current items to be reused are wine corks (for another art project), beer bottle metal lids (art project) and juice lids(more ornaments). My girls try to think of a new way to reuse things before they throw them in the recycling. Or sometimes they will dig through our recyclables and find something to use in a art project. I am so proud of my girls and how open they are to learning new ways to be kinder to this earth.
My question to you: Have I inspired you to try this out?
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