Back to school tips from an adult

Got an email in my inbox today with tips on keeping the planet green. I have a good mind to share them: Back to school tips from an adult

Using organic soaps and shampoos and benifiting the enviorenment as well as your health

When using soap and shampoo in your bath or shower, you release common chemical, processed soap and shampoo into the environment. Processed shampoo is also not the best for your hair and scalp.

Everyday chemical waste is thrown into rivers, lakes and seas, harming the natural environment. By using the common chemical soap and shampoo, you only add more to that unhealthy waste.

But by switching to organic soap you not only benefit your health, but the environment. It may cost a little more than processed soap and processed shampoo, but if you're an environmentalist it's all worth the cost.

But before using these organic materials, be sure to ensure there are no health hazards as some organic products may have them. Read up on the ingredients and tests done on the specific brands that you posses.

Also ensure from the labels or online researching that these products have not been tested on animals.

If these products are not available at your local store, they can be ordered from online sites such as Amazon as seen here.

Read more on the benefits of using organic soap.

Use recharchable electric shavers instead of regular shaving kits

This post is for men who do shave. When shaving with a regular shaving kit as pictures below, you use up water resources to clean your blade and your face when removing the cream. This also produces a lot of necessary sewage waste. Shaving with a kit is also costly as you have to keep buying new cream sprays after they run out.

Shaving with a kit is consumption and produces water waste as well as costly:

Now let's look at electric shaving and how it's done. The benefits of electric shavers are:

1) Money saving. All you have to do is recharge the electric shaver when it runs out of power. No need to go out and buy shaving cream or a new shaving blade when it's rusted.

2) No need to use up water and produce unnecessary water waste.

As pictured below, electric shavers require no cream, or washing of the face or the blades. All they require is to be opened and have the cut hair be thrown out. No water, no cleaning or cream required:

If you have a long beard and need to cut it off, use a pair of scissors to shorten it as much as possible, then use an electric shaver to shave off the shortened hair.

Using an electric shaver is environmentally friendly as pointed in this post and saves you the money of having to constantly need to buy a new shaving kit each time.

Using acrylic food covers instead of plastic food wrap

Pictured above is what many people use to wrap and store unfinished food. But the problem is once used, this plastic wrap is thrown away into the garbage and not recyclable. Also when these wraps are used, users will have to keep buying new ones to replace them.

The solution to this is to use acrylic food covers because they can be used again and again and do not get thrown away. Acrylic food covers can come in glass or plastic like the ones pictured below:

By using acrylic covers instead of plastic wrap you do not produce waste and save money.

Avoid buying wooden products unless recycled and possible alternates to them

Most people buy wooden products while ignoring the fact that they came from cut down trees. These products vary from wooden toys to furniture. At many times people don't have to buy these. You can survive without them.

If you need furniture, try to buy shelves or tables or whatever you need of metal or solid plastic. This way you do not support a the logging industry which comes from deforestation and destruction of natural habitat.

Unless the wooden item shows it is from recycled wood, then don't buy it. You are strongly encouraged to buy a metallic or plastic equivalent of the wooden product(s) you intended to buy.

Below are some examples of the non-wooden items I recommend:

Underline your textbooks with pencils instead of highliting them with markers/highlighters

For those of you who are in college or university and highlight the textbooks you bought, you probably won't be able to sell them back because they are highlighted and cannot be removed. Pictured below is what I mean:

Once there is highlight on it, the bookstores most likely won't buy them back because of this. But if you use pencil to underline important text, you can later erase if after your course(s) is over and sell it back to the college or university bookstore.

By selling back books, you get them resold, reused and recycled. But if you highlight it, you can only use it once and may have to keep it, thus wasting paper resources.

Buying used products to reduce waste and save money

Do you see many expensive luxury products in the store that you would like to buy but are not willing to spend the amount even if you can afford it? It could range from many things such as video games, game counsels, DVDs, books and others.

Many of these things can be bought second hand (used) and save you a fraction of the cost if it were bought brand new.
The used products take up space in the shelves and await to be purchased and unless they are, they will just sit there.

Many resources go into these luxury products and packaging them in brand new condition. By buying used products they not only costs less, but you are not producing waste by purchasing them wrapped.

Also because these products already exist as a result of resource consumption, buying them would mean not having to buy a brand new one to finance more resource consumption.

So buy used products as much as you can. Purchasing used products is not just limited to simple luxury and other goods. Purchasing used tools and machinery such as cars, jeeps, generators and others ensures we have made full use of our resources instead of necessarily buying new and consuming more.

Dumping organic waste into sand correctly

I unfortunately can't link or create any images to demonstrate this green idea so I'll try and word it as best as possible.

In the part of North America where I live, we have separate bins in household for waste that comes from living things. Weather it is food that no one wishes to eat or waste from food such as apple skins, banana peels or any other waste from food.

This organic waste goes to farms and is recycled to grow crops. This is obviously not possible in most other countries. But instead of throwing organic waste with regular garbage which attracts germs and can be a health hazard when dumped into the environment, it can be thrown into plain sand.

But one has to also be careful that it is not in a populated area where it will be a health hazard and removed from there or birds and other animals might take it away. Therefor it should be thrown in an unpopulated sandy area where it will decompose.
Items like apples, banana peels, corn covers and just about any natural food item can be thrown into the sand where it will dissolve. Processed food such as packaged chips or ice lollies (known as "popsicles" in North America) should not be thrown.

Any sandy areas such as a desert or beaches on sea/lake shores is good enough to dump the organic waste provided there are no people and/or animals who may remove them.

Buying milk cartons and milk jugs instead of milk pouches

Author's note: This is a re-post with some slight changes due to post title and url not matching the first time

If you are a strong environmentalist and believe in making sacrifices for the environment, this one is for you.
If you live in Europe or North America, you usually divide your waste between recycling and garbage. Here is a chance to reduce your garbage and make it recyclable.

The milk pouches you see pictured below are normally bought and have larger quantities of milk also available in lower prices. However, once used, these milk pouches made of plastic cannot be reused and become garbage:




Milk cartons can however be recycled though they come at a higher price and have less quantity of milk. But if you're an environmentalist and can sacrifice some money to reduce waste and do good for the planet, then buying these recyclable milk cartons like the one pictured below is your best choice:




Another recyclable choice are plastic milk jugs like the one pictured below:

Using magnifying glass to start fires instead of matches or lighters on a sunny day

If you intend to start a fire on a hot sunny day to barbecue outdoors or for other kind of cooking, you can do it without using up matches and lighters. Simply pile up the coal or wood you want to burn and focus a magnifying glass on it as pictured below:

It is advisable to place a used piece of paper or pour a bit of flammable liquid to start the fire more easily, but not at all necessary. By using a magnifying glass you save matches and lighter fuel.

But note that it must be a hot day with intense sunlight in order for this to happen.

How to clean out an item you want to throw away for recycling without wasting water

In the city which I live in all recyclable waste can be thrown into a separate bin for pickup just as the garbage is.
All the regular recyclable material we buy and use we dispose of in the recycling bin before being trucked away twice a month by the municipal service in our city.

So as it is I throw regular recyclable waste as well as anything that can be recycled and not in use. But sometimes a disposable product requires washing especially if it carries liquid such as a shampoo bottle or a soap bottle.
I had to dispose of such items as well a small plastic ink bottle once but they required washing out before being thrown into a dry waste bin.

So I decided when I was showering I would use the shower water to rinse out the liquid from the recyclable bottle. That way no extra water would be used. The water already flowing out of the shower and being used for bathing can also be poured into the bottle and clean it out. This way no extra water is used to clean out a plastic bottle before disposing of it.

I urge everyone to use this method to help conserve precious water.

Buy recycled paper

When buying blank paper for printing and/or lined paper for writing try to buy recycled paper as pictured above if your store has any. Using recycled products helps reduce resource consumption and waste production.

Think green, live green

Even if you are not taking care of wild animals or directly contributing to the preservation of wild species, there still many useful suggestions for how you can generally help preserve the environment:

Making use of your old clothes

Some people give away their old clothes that are torn and scratched to charity. I prefer sleeping in my old clothes compared to thin pajamas as my clothes are thicker and warmer.

Sometimes at home I wear my old/torn clothes but just inside the house because I don't want to spoil or dirty my formal clothes. By making use of your old/torn clothes you don't have to throw them away and unnecessarily produce waste until they are really unusable.

At other occasions you can use your old clothes when doing messy work such as painting or cleaning a certain place. You can also use them when cooking so any spilled or frying food comes at your already dirty/used clothes.

Using computers for distributing/collecting assignments instead of paper

This may be something for teachers to look into. Instead of students receiving handouts/assignments on paper, students can receive them online via computer and also send them once finished back online.

This could reduce the consumption of paper resources. I understand that data on computer takes up hard disc space but hard disc space can contain much more data than paper. Additionally once data is used on hard disc it can be deleted clean, unlike paper which needs to be recycled and cannot be used again the same way.

Some university professors do require/accept assignments returned online.

If this practice was more common it would significantly help the environment and conserve resources.

Using magiboards and blackboards for public demonstrations instead of placards

For those who are politically active and take part in public demonstrations- especially environmentalists, a great way to post public messages in demonstrations is to stop using placards which take up paper resources. Typical usage of placards for public demonstrations pictured below:

Using a placard only allows a message to be written once. But by using a magiboard or blackboard to display a message, you can erase it and use it again and again. This will also reduce paper resource consumption as well as costs.

Using hand dryers in public washrooms instead of paper towels

Many public washrooms in countries all over the world have hand drying machines for people to use after washing their hands to dry on as the one pictured below:

People using the public washrooms usually have the option of drying their hands by using a piece of paper towel and disposing it in the trash bin or using a hand drying machine. By using a hand drying machine, you don't use a tissue paper and by doing that you don't produce waste.

So the next time you're in a washroom, use a hand dryer if there is one instead of a paper towel and think of how you're helping the environment even in a small way.

Wrap your presents in plain recyclable paper

For those who live in a country where recycling is available, you are encouraged not to wrap your gifts in gift wrapping paper such the one pictured below:

The reason is such kind of plastic paper cannot be recycled and is thrown into garbage after being used only once. Regular white or brown paper on the other hand even after once can be recycled and thrown into recyclable waste.

The image below is what it looks like when used for wrapping packages including gifts:

Readers are encouraged to use such type of paper when wrapping gifts instead of plastic wrapping gift paper which only adds to waste whereas regular white or brown paper can be recycled and used again.