‘Win a Bin!’: Check Out St. Charles Reader’s Clever Recycling Idea
- Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series of recycling tips from Kane County Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jarland. Got a question or idea for a recycling tip? Contact Jarland at 630-208-3841 or recycle@countyofkane.org.
There are so many ways to ReThink, Reduce and Reuse, but one of the best is to explore your very own creativity, imagination and inventiveness.
As you may recall, we recently published an article about the 4 Rs and ReThinking our waste disposal habits. In that article, I challenged readers to tell me about your existing efforts for reducing waste, and to offer your ideas for minimizing waste.
Just for fun, we made that challenge into a “Win The Bin” competition, with the winner to be selected based on most original idea, ease of application (easy to do), and replicability (easy for everyone to do). We promised that responses would be shared in a future article and that the winner would receive a fabulous prize: your very own recycling bin.
We received several great responses on how to reduce energy and water consumption, but for the scope of this article, I will keep it to what we call in the industry “solid waste.” The answers were varied and unique, and it was difficult to choose a winner!
I loved hearing about all of the super things that you are doing to reduce waste in your lives, and was thoroughly impressed by ideas inspired by rethinking your waste!
Here are some ideas that your neighbors submitted that you can all apply!
ReThink
The winning idea was submitted by Christine Flood of the St. Charles Public Library, and it’s simple and elegant and original and just plain smart:
Cute little bar soaps for kids, made from used bars of soap. (CREDIT: Wiki How)
Use bar soap instead of liquid body washes and hand soaps in order to reduce the use of plastic bottles.
This might seem like a small thing, but it’s a meaningful step that many people can choose to take.
While liquid soap bottles are recyclable, the squirt dispenser is not. So why not eliminate the plastic altogether? Look for bar soap that comes in paper wrapping or some of the many soaps that come without any packaging at all; at co-ops and Whole Foods, for example.
If you really want to get creative, you can even re-use your bar soap “leftovers” or make new bar soap!
Here are some other fantastic ideas submitted by our alert readers:
Reduce
- Do not use single-use plastic: plates, cups and utensils. (They’re not recyclable and end up as landfill trash.)
- For printing from computer at home (or even for handwriting), use back side of the paper, too. Your home office paper usage gets reduced by 50 percent.
Reuse
- Use cloth napkins instead of disposable paper napkins.
Bring home unused paper napkins from restaurants for future use instead of throwing them away at fast food restaurants. Take only what you can use.- Use reusable containers (or recyclable foil) for sack-lunches (or rather, lunch-box-bag lunches) instead of zip-lock bags or plastic wrap.
- Bring reusable containers from home when dining out in a restaurant. Instead of taking a to-go container for leftovers, put the leftovers in a reusable container. This is an effort we can all start, just like reusable bags at the grocery store!
- Mix leftover paint together to use for smaller projects.
Refuse
Stop Sucking! Refuse straws in your drinks, and ask food service establishments to see if people want them or not. Don’t just put them in every drink!- Refuse to accept plastic utensils for takeout orders going home. Use regular stainless steel utensils available at home.
- Don’t bring home plastic hangers from stores when you buy new clothes. Stores can reuse them and many types are not usable at home anyway.
I was really inspired by the commitments that people made to take the next step! In fact my new commitment is to spread the word about refusing straws! #stopsucking
Compost
- Compost food scraps and yard waste in the back yard.
Homework
You know, I’m just a lone recycling coordinator, and I could really use your help. So here are your assignments for the next week:
- Pick one thing (or several) from the list above that you are not already doing, and commit to doing it!
- Email me and let me know what you are doing to ReThink, Reduce, Reuse, Refuse, and Compost.
- Send me your questions for my Recycling Tips articles!
Contact: Jennifer Jarland, Kane County Recycling Coordinator, at 630-208-3841 or recycle@countyofkane.org.
