There are two good places, garage and the kitchen. Since most family activities start with the kitchen in the morning and ends in the kitchen after dinner, in my opinion, it is the perfect place. If you have a large size closet, place your bins and containers on the shelf and large ones on the floor. Mark them clearly and let everyone know what goes into where. You need to teach your children if they’re old enough. It’s a habit that everyone can develop.

The other big saver is using sponges or rags instead of paper towels. For cleaning the kitchen counter, bathrooms, or any other cleaning jobs, use rags and just rinse them off after each use. That’s most people in the world use.

Lastly, use reusable grocery bags instead of the paper or plastic bags because neither saves our environment.

The good news is, not really. We can put all recycles in the same bins. After the waste management truck dumps them to a materials recovery facility, they will be sorted and prepared into marketable commodities for manufacturing.

Once cleaned and separated, the recyclables are ready to undergo the second part of the recycling loop. Common household items that can be recycled are newspapers and paper towels; aluminum, plastic, and glass soft drink containers; steel cans; and plastic laundry detergent bottles.

Did you know that recycled materials can also are used in innovative applications such as recovered glass in roadway asphalt (glassphalt) or recovered plastic in carpeting, park benches, and pedestrian bridges?

Source: EPA

Things that are biodegradable are not considered to be recycled. So don’t mix up your garden waste, trees, food waste, leaves with recycled materials. Making a compost pile is the best way to get rid of biodegradable wastes. Instead of adding more stuff to the waste treatment plant or landfill, compost them in your backyard.

Buy a small compost bucket and put on your kitchen counter and a large compost bin in your backyard. Although you probably can do just fine making a designated area in the backyard, but it’ll cleaner if you have a heavily wooded area with wild animals. They can definitely make a mess of your compost.

Buy plastic bins and mark them with “newspaper”, “paper”, “plastic bottles”, “cans” and place them in the kitchen. To keep the kitchen clean, you can place them in the closet. They don’t have to be super big, just enough for a few days to a week’s recycling. Then teach you children and husband where to find them and how to fill them up.

But a composting bin and place in on the kitchen counter and place all unwanted vegetables in it and empty it in a designated composting pile area in the backyard.

Make recycling fun for your children. You can do the same with unwanted toys and clothes. Place two medium sized plastic bins in children’s closets and ask them to place unwanted toys and out-grown clothes in them. Then take the items and donate them to the salvation army. This way, the house stays neat and organized and everything is recycled.

2. Make sure bottles and tins are cleaned before putting in the recycling bin. This prevents flies both at home and the recycling place.

3. Reorganize the kitchen so it has an efficient recycling area with good sized containers to help with sorting and holding. This will encourage everyone in the family to remember to recycle.

4. Cut both the tops and the bottoms off metal cans and squash them makes them smaller to fit into the recycling bin.

5. Put a ‘no junk mail’ sticker on your letter box. You’ll be amazed at how much this reduces your junk mails.

6. Spread the word and set an axample in your community. By telling other people and helping them to get started, we increase the savings that can be made. Get your kids involved , if we can educate them early, they will grow up and appreciate waste reduction and will be able to apply these skills in later life.

Then collect lots and lots of plastic bottles. 2L bottles are ideal and you will need to use bottles that have straight sides, shaped bottles will not work for this. Whichever size you choose don’t forget that all your bottles will need to be of the same size.

My greenhouse took approximately 1,500 bottles to make) Simply cut off the bottom of each bottle and then thread them onto metal rods, you will need to make sure they are all threaded on in the same direction so that the top of each bottle fits snug into the underside of next bottle. Next fix metal rods (top and bottom) to framework, butting up each column of bottles to the next until all walls and the door are created. The use of a few coloured plastic bottles above the door will give an interesting stained glass effect!

Non-Automotive Lead-Based Batteries
Gel cells and sealed lead-acid batteries are commonly used to power industrial equipment, emergency lighting, and alarm systems. The same recycling process applies as with automotive batteries. An automotive store or a local waste agency may accept the batteries for recycling.

Dry-Cell Batteries
Dry-cell batteries include alkaline and carbon zinc (9-volt, D, C, AA, AAA), mercuric-oxide (button, some cylindrical and rectangular), silver-oxide and zinc-air (button), and lithium (9-volt, C, AA, coin, button, rechargeable). On average, each person in the United States discards eight dry-cell batteries per year.

• Alkaline and Zinc-Carbon Batteries
  Alkaline batteries, the everyday household batteries used in flashlights, remote controls, and other appliances. Several reclamation companies now process these batteries.
• Button-Cell Batteries
  Most small, round “button-cell” type batteries found in items such as watches and hearing aids contain mercury, silver, cadmium, lithium, or other heavy metals as their main component. Button cells are increasingly targeted for recycling because of the value of recoverable materials, their small size, and their easy handling relative to other battery types.
• Rechargeable Batteries
  The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC), a nonprofit public service organization, targets four kinds of rechargeable batteries for recycling: nickel-cadmium (Ni-CD), nickel metal hydride, lithium ion, and small-sealed lead. Its “Charge Up to Recycle!” program offers various recycling plans for communities, retailers, businesses, and public agencies.

Source: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/battery.htm

Just the Facts

• Americans purchase nearly 3 billion dry-cell batteries every year to power radios, toys, cellular phones, watches, laptop computers, and portable power tools.
• Inside a battery, heavy metals react with chemical electrolyte to produce the battery’s power.
• Wet-cell batteries, which contain a liquid electrolyte, commonly power automobiles, boats, or motorcycles.
• Nearly 99 million wet-cell lead-acid car batteries are manufactured each year.
• Mercury was phased out of certain types of batteries in conjunction with the “Mercury-Containing and Rechargeable Battery Management Act,” passed in 1996.
• Recycling batteries keeps heavy metals out of landfills and the air. Recycling saves resources because recovered plastic and metals can be used to make new batteries.

Batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and nickel, which can contaminate the environment when batteries are improperly disposed of. When incinerated, certain metals might be released into the air or can concentrate in the ash produced by the combustion process.

One way to reduce the number of batteries in the waste stream is to purchase rechargeable batteries. Nearly one in five dry-cell batteries purchased in the United States is rechargeable. Over its useful life, each rechargeable battery may substitute for hundreds of single-use batteries.

Source: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/battery.htm