![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epa.gov\/reg3artd\/images\/Landfill-GROWS4.jpg?resize=491%2C227\" "\\"landfill\\"")
I\u2019ve been a long time reducer, reuser, recycler and composter. Early on, I realized that we humans are creating too much trash and are having a difficult time managing it. \u00a0I remember driving past a landfill when I was a teenager and concluded that trash should not be buried. In Florida, if you see what appears to be a hill or a mountain \u2013 it\u2019s a mountain of trash! That is so wrong.<\/p>\n
Yes, we have to live and we will generate waste, but if we look at what we actually need and how to obtain these necessary items, we are able to limit the amount of trash we create. Germany knew that too much trash was generated from unnecessary packaging; so in 1991 they passed a packaging law \u201cVerpackungsverordnung,\u201d that requires manufacturers to take care of the recycling or disposal of any packaging material they sell. Therefore, waste became the burden of the manufacturer not the consumer. Guess what happened? Products were produced with less packaging \u2013 BRILLIANT!!<\/p>\n When I moved into my first apartment after college, I started to look at my trash differently. For the first time in my life, I was living on my own and deciding what I needed and what I wanted to buy all by myself \u2013 no roommates to negotiate with.<\/p>\n At first, I would simply bring my herb jars to the co-op and fill them up. Now I buy herbs, dry fruit, grains, honey, maple syrup, vanilla, molasses, cooking oil, coffee, shampoo, conditioner and of course meat, cheese, fruit, and vegetables in bulk.\u00a0 It takes planning no doubt, but if I bring my own containers and bags (which I reuse of course) I generate very little waste. Two added bonuses are that many of the bulk items tend to be less expensive (no $ going into packaging) and procured locally, so I am helping the local economy, my pocketbook, while reducing waste.<\/p>\n In 2011, a group of students and professors from Yale University found two fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR)<\/a> in anaerobic conditions (without oxygen), which may provide some relief to our waste issues.<\/p>\n Yes, we can recycle, reuse, bury our trash, put it on a barge, send it into space, perhaps even use fungi\u2026.but isn\u2019t it easier to not create it in the first place? Let\u2019s just reduce!<\/p>\n Do you have ways to reduce your wastes? Please share them, as I will continue to share more of my ideas with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been a long time reducer, reuser, recycler and composter. Early on, I realized that we humans are creating too much trash and are having a difficult time managing it. \u00a0I remember driving past a landfill when I was a … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/greenopolis.com\/files\/images\/garbage_barge01.jpg?resize=366%2C366\" "\\"Barge")
Furthermore, it should not be put onto a barge and floated out to sea. Remember the barge that no one wanted<\/a>? In 1987, it left NY and for 112 days, it traveled 5,000 miles down to Belize and back because no one wanted the trash.<\/p>\nIn 1997, Captain Charles Moore discovered the \u201cPacific Trash Vortex<\/a>.\u201d It is an area in the North-Central Pacific where tiny bits of trash, together weighing as much as 100 million tons, the size of the state of Texas had been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. There are five similar vortexes on our earth. That\u2019s a lot of trash!<\/p>\n
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