30. E-Waste: E-liminate it. Recycle your electronic waste—computer monitors, desktops, laptops, fax machines, printers, scanners, peripherals, keyboards, telephones, digital cameras, VCR players, DVD players, televisions, etc., which could be chock full of lead, mercury, plastics, etc.
- Visit Illnois Recycles and click on “E-cycling” for a list of collection sites (some take items without charge; others charge a small fee). Visit Earth911 for more of the same
- Office Depot offers a Tech Recycling program. The store will recycle as much e-waste as shoppers can fit into one of Office Depot’s small ($5), medium ($10) or large ($15) Tech Recycling boxes. The only charge is for the box. Visit officedepot.com/techrecycling for the list of acceptable items.
- Staples stores in Chicagoland also invite consumers to bring in a wide variety of e-waste (but not TVs) for recycling. There is a $10 fee per piece of large equipment; no charge for small computer peripherals such as mice and keyboards. Some of the items will be refurbished by Staples’ partner, Collective Good, and sold with a portion of the proceeds going to charity. For more information, visit Staples.
- And finally, OfficeMax has extended its pilot program for electronics recycling. Through February, customers can bring obsolete computer equipment to any Chicagoland OfficeMax store (downtown Express stores excluded). Cost to recycle: $5 to $20 a piece. For their effort, customers get an in-store coupon ($5 to $30) to use on selected items.
31. Plastic Bags: Bring your own (string, canvas, any kind of reusable) bags to grocery stores and say “no” to the store’s plastic bags. Americans toss some 100 billion of those low-quality polyethylene plastic bags annually and the recycling rate for them is just 0.6 percent. Each high-quality reusable bag has the potential of eliminating hundreds or even thousands of plastic bags over its lifetime.
32. Pesticides: Avoid using them in your garden and yard. Build up healthy soil instead to help prevent disease. Use barriers such as netting or cutworm collars. Wash aphids away with spray from the hose. Encourage beneficial insects that eat harmful ones. And learn to tolerate a few weeds, spots or insects if it’s only an aesthetic problem.
33. Fertilizers: Don’t over-fertilize. Plants only can absorb so much; the rest washes away to pollute waterways. Follow directions or err on the side of less. Look for organic fertilizers that release nutrients slowly.
34. Native Plants: Use them in your garden. They know how to fend for themselves; they’re adapted to the local climate, soils and pests. That means less watering and fewer chemicals.
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