Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: A How-to Guide for Hard-to-Recycle Items

 A lot of the waste reduction tactics and topics that have been covered thus far on Greener Living focus on the pivotal mindset of the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (and a fourth R, of course: refuse). However, when we are unable or unwilling to reduce the amount of trash we generate in our daily lives by refusing disposable items like single-use plastic water bottles, straws, coffee cups, tissues, and plastic bags—just to name a few—it becomes increasingly important to seek to reuse and recycle our waste whenever possible.

Mentioned briefly in my previous post on Greening Your Hygiene Routine, Terracycle is a unique recycling program worth a deeper look.

Terracycle partners with brands, manufacturers, and retailers to offer free collection and recycling of hard-to-recycle waste like toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, empty chapsticks, e-waste, energy bar wrappers, and cereal bags. Partnering organizations include Brita, Burt’s Bees, Colgate, Clif Bar, Eos, and Febreeze, among many others.

Some programs are brand-specific, while others are not. The Clif Bar Energy Bar Wrapper Recycling Program, for example, accepts all foil-lined energy bar wrappers in addition to all Clif Bar product packaging.

There are also some free general recycling programs available through Terracycle, such as their e-waste recycling program, plastic cereal bags and cereal bag liners of any brand, and oral care products of any brand accepted through Colgate’s Recycling Partnership.

Be sure to visit each program’s individual FAQ page for more information on what specific products can be sent in for recycling, whether or not said products need to be cleaned prior to sending them in, and whether or not there is a minimum weight required in order for the shipment to be sent. Burt’s Bees Recycle on Us program, for example, accepts only Burt’s Bees brand products ranging from lip balm tubes to wipes packaging to sunscreen tubes, and simply asks that as much of the remaining product as possible be removed and that the products be dry prior to shipping.

For items that are not included in the free brand-specific or general recycling programs through Terracycle, there is also the option to purchase a Zero Waste Box to collect difficult-to-recycle waste that is not accepted by municipal recycling streams or free Terracycle programs. These Zero Waste Boxes allow a wide range of products, like bottle caps, batteries, athletic balls, and beauty products, among many other offerings, to be recycled. However, these Zero Waste Box options are rather expensive and therefore not widely accessible.

As an individual, you can make a difference by signing up for numerous free Terracycle Recycling Programs that meet the needs of your specific patterns and sources of waste. For example, this week I signed up for Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Colgate Oral Care, and Clif Bar Energy Bar Wrapper Recycling Programs. I was added to a waitlist and will be informed via email once a spot in these programs becomes available, but in the meantime I will start collecting those sources of waste with the intent of recycling them through Terracycle in the future.

You can make an even greater difference by coordinating community collection boxes at local businesses, schools, or workplaces in order to collect and ship the products more efficiently than on an individual basis. Terracycle even offers helpful resources on how to engage your community in Terracycle Programs. You can also coordinate public drop off points or search for pre-existing drop off locations for certain products.

In addition to recycling opportunities through Terracycle, there are other creative and innovative organizations putting “trash” to good use, like the Appalachian Wildlife Refuge’s mascara wand upcycling program:

As a steadfast non-wearer of makeup, I cannot say that I have done this myself, but a more makeup savvy friend of mine came across this opportunity to re-purpose mascara wands. Specifically, used mascara wands can be cleaned with warm water and soap, placed in Ziploc bags, and mailed to the Appalachian Wildlife Refuge, where they are upcycled and re-purposed for medical care and wound treatment. These mascara wands are useful tools to clean away oil, larvae, fly eggs, mites, infections, mud, and other contaminants from wildlife.

Used wand donations are accepted twice annually, in October and February, and can be sent to:

Appalachian Wild
P.O. Box 1211
Skyland, NC 28776

Or

Wildlife Wands
P.O. Box 1586
Southwick, MA 01077

Check out Appalachian Wildlife Refuge’s website for more information on this upcycling program.

If your local recycling doesn’t accept certain products for recycling and you can’t find a program like Terracycle through which to recycle your waste, consider upcycling your waste into a DIY project. Terracycle offers a page of DIY Project ideas including  jewelry, wallets, garden projects, and holiday ornaments. You can also check out Diply’s 16 Ways You Can Upcycle Your Old Lip Balm Containers for a list of creative ways to reuse lip balm / chapstick containers.

Although I’ve only touched upon a few specific products, I encourage you to take the time to look into upcycling and recycling opportunities for any and all waste you generate in your daily life. With some research and creative thinking, you just may find that many sources of waste in your daily life can in fact be diverted from landfills and be reused or re-purposed into useful and fun creations.

This week as you continue down the path toward greener living, I challenge you to seek out one source of hard-to-recycle waste in your life and either upcycle it in some way, sign up for a Terracycle program, or find some other creative means of re-purposing or recycling your waste. As always, let me know how it goes in the comments section below.

~Sam

Search Sustainably with Ecosia!

On average, an individual with access to the internet conducts anywhere from one to eight internet searches every day. The largest search engine, Google, receives a staggering 40,000 search queries every second which amounts to 3.5 billion searches every day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide, according to Internet Live Stats. That’s a lot of searches, and whether you’re searching from your computer or phone, imagine being able to use those searches for good! Well, imagine no more, because that is exactly what Ecosia offers.

For those of you wondering just what Ecosia is, it’s simple: it’s a search engine that uses its profits to plant trees. When I first heard about this, I thought it sounded too good to be true. However, after some additional research and experience using the search engine, I am officially an Ecosia convert. An exemplar of what a responsible business model should look like, Ecosia is transparent, sustainable, and thoughtful in their operations.

Ecosia is a free search engine that uses its profits, or surplus income, generated from advertisements to plant trees. The act of planting a tree may seem insignificant, but as Ecosia explains on their website, “the forests Ecosia users have planted mitigate climate change, save endangered animals, regenerate depleted soil, and improve the livelihoods of local communities.” That’s wildly significant considering it takes no extra effort on our parts aside from installing the Ecosia extension and/or app and continuing to search the web as usual.

Ecosia is not only environmentally-focused in how they use their advertising revenue, but they are also responsible in their day to day operations with their servers running on 100% renewable energy generated from a solar energy plant constructed in 2017.  Similarly, Google, the world’s largest search engine, has been carbon neutral since 2017. However, Ecosia takes carbon neutrality a step further because with every tree planted they are actively removing CO2 from our atmosphere!

At the time of this blog post, over 60 million trees have been planted using the revenue generated by the Ecosia search engine. More specifically, Ecosia supports over 20 tree-planting projects in 15 different countries including Peru, Brazil, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Haiti, Colombia, Spain, Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Indonesia, utilizing local partners to plant and monitor the trees on the ground.

In addition to running on 100% renewable energy and actively removing CO2 from our atmosphere through their mission of planting trees, Ecosia is a Certified B Corporation, meaning  they, “balance purpose and profit and are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment.” B Corporations drive a global movement of people using business as a force for good. There are over 2,780 companies that are Certified B Corporations, with Ecosia included among the list of well-known socially responsible and progressive companies such as Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia.

Unlike some companies that falsely claim to be acting as a force of good, Ecosia provides transparent evidence and access to their monthly financial reports and tree planting receipts so that you can know exactly how the income from your searches is being used. You can even stay up to date with Ecosia’s reforestation projects by listening to The Ecosia Podcast, subscribing to the Ecosia newsletter, or checking out their blog.

To use Ecosia on a mobile device or tablet, simply download the free Ecosia app. You can also add Ecosia as an extension to Chrome browsers or set Ecosia as your homepage in Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, or Edge browsers. For instructions on how to do this, visit Ecosia’s technical support page. Then, simply continue to search away, watching your personal search count tally up (on average it takes about 45 searches to plant a tree) while knowing you are contributing to reforestation and sustainable conservation efforts.

The most important thing you can do on your path toward greener living this week is to not only start using the Ecosia search engine yourself, but to spread the word and encourage others to use it as well. This week’s blog, while not necessarily highlighting a source of waste in our everyday lives, instead encourages a practice of thoughtfulness, intentionality, and consciousness that can inform not only our internet searches, but every aspect of our lives. Whether you start searching with Ecosia or choose more generally to support Certified B Corporations going forward, let me know how it goes in the comments section below.

~Sam

Pernicious Paper Towels: Refuse, Reduce, Don’t Use!!

In the midst of the busy humdrum of our everyday lives, it is alarmingly easy to be unconsciously wasteful. In a culture shaped by the tenets of convenience, and the inherent disposability that comes with such convenience, waste has become normalized, expected, and overlooked. As evidenced by this blog and the sources of waste identified in previous posts, many sources of waste in our daily lives can and should be avoided and replaced with more sustainable alternatives. Today’s topic is no exception: paper towels.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I abhor the use of paper towels. Whether they are being used for drying one’s hands in a public restroom, cleaning up spills, or wiping down surfaces, there is simply no need for them to exist.

As with other sources of unnecessary waste and resource consumption in our lives, paper towel usage comes with some serious environmental ramifications:
-According to Better Planet Paper, in the US alone, 13 billion pounds (6,500,000 TONS!!) of paper towels are used each year.
-To make just one ton of paper towels requires 17 trees and 20,000 gallons of water.
-Additionally, it would require 51,000 trees per day to replace the number of paper towels that are thrown away each day.
And that, is the very essence of the issue here: our acclimatization to, comfort with, and acceptance of our throwaway culture.


Instead of using, wasting, and throwing away countless paper towels, you can progress down the path toward greener living by deciding to do without these wasteful, single-use products.
This can be done by:

1. Simply don’t use them! If you are in a public restroom, choose to use hand dryers or let your hands air dry instead.

2. At home, invest in reusable dishcloths (or repurpose old textiles, such as old t-shirts, into rags). Because dishcloths have a much longer lifespan than single-use paper towels, the impact of their production is much less per use. Additionally, washing your dishcloths using green laundry techniques can further reduce the impact per use. Learn more about the greener and greenest dishcloth options by checking out Green Lifestyle Magazine’s post on the topic.

3. If you do continue to use paper towels (at home or while on the go), be sure to use sparingly. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have looked on in absolute horror as people carelessly pull five or six paper towels from the dispenser and use only a fraction of them to dry their hands before placing the largely unused stack into the trash!!

4. Again, if you continue to use paper towels, be sure to purchase recycled paper products rather than products produced from virgin wood pulp. According to Dr. Greene’s 13 Facts About Home Paper Products, if every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber paper towels (70 sheets) with 100 percent recycled ones, we could save 544,000 trees.

5. Although paper towels should not be recycled as oils and other residues can contaminate the recycling stream, used paper towels can and should be composted as long as there are no harmful chemicals on the paper towels after use. Don’t have a compost? Learn how to start one by checking out my previous post on household composting!! 

6. Engage in some guerrilla-style environmentalism by investing in “These Come from Trees” stickers to place on paper towel dispensers. Each sticker deployed saves about 100 pounds (a tree’s worth of paper) every year by raising our levels of consciousness regarding paper towel waste. I ordered a 50-sticker pack for $10 and am eagerly awaiting their arrival...

Overall, the aim of this week’s post, and of this blog in general, is not to shame anyone for their current choices or practices, but to instead raise awareness as to the environmental ramifications of said practices and offer more sustainable, greener alternatives. So, this week I urge you to commit to a paper towel free life. The first steps may be as simple as buying a reusable dishcloth or letting your hands air dry the next time you are in a public restroom. As always, please let me know how it goes and feel free to share any thoughts, considerations, or concerns in the comments section below. In the meantime, best of luck on your journey toward greener living.

~Sam