3 Ways To Save The Planet (And Money) By Cutting Waste
June 15, 2011 
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Sometimes I think that the environmentally conscious are true optimists. We seem convinced that we can save the planet and make a world of difference, if only we can get the word out and have everyone take steps to change things. Even tiny victories are celebrated and we happily make those little shifts in behavior that have an impact over time that otherwise would have damaged the Earth. We never question the principle, and we all have different reasons for doing it.
Here are three ways that you can save cash by cutting waste.
1. Recycling
I am not talking about picking cans out of the trash and recycling them for $0.05 a piece (though you can do that, too). You can actually recycle bigger items you are no longer using for a decent chunk of change.
My Boneyard Recycle is one good example of a great recycling company. They take electronics such as cellphones, game consoles and media players. You select the type on their website and it will tell you how much you can get based on condition. It might be as little as $20 or as much as $200. This is then applied to a prepaid Visa card when you send in your item. Shipping it paid by the site with a prepaid shipping label you can download and print from home.
Freecycling
No, it isn’t riding a bike instead of driving a car (though that always helps)! It is finding people who have items they want to get rid of and taking those items off their hands. Everything is free – if you couldn’t tell by the name – and it will keep you from spending money and keep them from throwing it away. You can also get rid of your own stuff using this method.
Probably the largest and most popular site is Freecycle, which will help you find groups in your area. From there you can search for items.
Reducing Energy Use
Turning off lights when you leave a room, keeping the TV switched off when not watching it, using media players instead of radios, changing your computer settings to be more power efficient…these are all probably second nature to you by now. But there are a few others ways you can keep from wasting energy.
- Turn off all appliances at night. This doesn’t mean going through and unplugging everything in your home, which is a hassle most won’t bother with. Instead, you can put everything on large power strips and then switch that off at night, then on whenever you need them. Some might not even be switched back on for days!
- Do larger loads. Instead of separating all of your clothes, do as many as you can at once, This saves water and energy when you dry it. Hang what you can on clothes lines if you have the space, such as sheets and other linens that usually take several cycles to complete in a tumble dryer.
- Only switch off the lights if you are leaving the room for more than 15 minutes. This will actually save bulbs, which are more damaging that the energy spent to keep them on. Frequent switching on and off will burn them out faster.
Jessy is a sustainable blogger and stay at home mom who writes for Home Loan Finder, the free eco-friendly online mortgage broker. Check out our post on how buying old houses saves your money and the environment!
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by seannaber
Actually, the amount of energy saved from recycling activities differs by material, but almost all recycling processes achieve significant energy savings if compared with virgin material production. For example, recycling of aluminum cans allows saving up to 95 % of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from other virgin sources. For each can recycled, this is enough energy to run a television or computer for about 3 hours. By some conservative estimates, recycling was projected to save 605 trillion British Thermal Units (BTUs) in 2005, which is the amount of the energy used in 6 million households each year. What is more, about 4 % of the America’s total energy consumption is now used in the production of all plastic products, and some of this energy can be recovered through the recycling of plastics products after their useful life is terminated. Just think about it.