Do you have any suggestions, practical ideas, creative usage or other ideas on how to reduce your consumption of ‘stuff’, reuse/recycling the ‘stuff’ you do have in new ways rather than throwing it into the trash to go live in a landfill?

Here’s a few things to get you started:

• Buy a reusable water bottle and refill from the Union’s ‘hydration station’ or any water fountain. Saves money, reduces plastic waste, reduces oil usage  (come to see “Tapped: The Movie” at the EMBI Green Innovations Conference on April 19th – it’s free! – and informative).
• Make sure you use the duplex setting when you print – save some paper – and be sure to recycle the paper in the proper bin when it’s ready to go.
• Earn some cash for your old electronics – visit Gazelle.com to see if you can sell them your old iPhone, x-box, or other electronic items.

What are your ideas – do you have one simple idea you can share?

• In WISCONSIN, we generate 4.6 million tons of trash and recyclables each year. That’s enough to fill a typical city street over 4 feet deep with trash (curb to curb) for 575 miles! If you remove the recyclables, only 357 miles would be filled with trash.
• In the UNITED STATES, we generate enough trash and recyclables each DAY to fill 72,450 garbage trucks that hold 9 tons of trash each (which means 26,444,250 garbage trucks in a YEAR). Recyclables would fill 27,531 garbage truck each DAY.
• The average person in WISCONSIN generates 4.7 pounds of trash (residential and their share of commercial trash) each day and recycles 1.9 pound of that trach per day.
• The average person in the UNITED STATES generates 4.7 pounds of trash each day and recycles 1.4 pounds of that trash per day.