Everyone's Responsibility
If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t thought much about waste management. Sure, you care. You recycle—you conserve where you can. But what else can you do, really?
Well, we can all do more—especially when we consider that the top three items in landfills are paper, yard clippings and food scraps—totaling almost 60 percent.
We can have a big impact on the amount of waste we generate by paying attention to source reduction and reuse. When we reduce and reuse, we stop making waste in the first place. And this goes a long way toward preserving our landfills and protecting the environment.
Waste prevention (source reduction) means consuming and throwing away less stuff. Combine this with reusing items such as coffee mugs, cardboard boxes, plastic bags, or refillable pens and pencils and you’ll be saving the energy it would have taken to recycle these materials.
Overall, the more we’re aware of what and how much we throw away, we can start to change some of our habits about buying and using things.
It’s our job… but it’s everyone’s responsibility.
