Check with your municipality to see if it has scheduled a household hazardous waste collection date with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
21. Cleaning Tiles. Keep shower tiles sparkling clean without using chemicals. After a shower, use a microfiber cloth or chamois to wipe down tiles and fixtures or for glass, use a squeegee.
22. Brushing Teeth. Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth and save as much as 10 gallons a day, a person. For a family of four, that’s 14,600 gallons of water a year.
23. Recycling Etiquette.
- Rinse out cans and bottles before throwing them into a recycling bin to discourage vermin and keep food waste off paper.
- Remove caps from bottles, since they are made of different materials. But don’t bother trying to remove the plastic or metal rings that are often left from caps on glass bottles.
- It’s best to keep paper recyclables dry until collection day. But a night in the rain isn’t fatal.
- Don’t risk cutting yourself by trying to remove the metal tops from cardboard tubes (in products such as scouring powder and ready-to-bake cinnamon rolls). Separation is ideal, but most recycling programs will process the item anyway, either as metal or mixed paper.
24. Soda Cans. They’re small, but not insignificant. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television or operate a computer for three hours.
25. Plastic Newspaper Sleeves. Reuse the sleeves that your newspaper comes wrapped in. Wrap paintbrushes in them if you’re midway through a project but have to stop for the day. The plastic sleeve will keep the brush soft for up to a day and saves water normally used for rinsing brushes. You can also use them to slide shoes into when packing.
50 Simple Tips for a Greener Life, 26-50 (Part 2)
This article is reprinted from WomenCo.
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