Terri Ramsey Beavers If you’re having difficulties handling your family’s garbage output, it’s time you put a little more planning into how you manage waste at home. The average American family creates about 18 pounds of household trash daily. Multiply this number by 365 days, and the household deals with 6,570 pounds yearly. An efficient waste management system will significantly reduce your family’s risk of contracting various illnesses and keep your home healthy. It will also save you considerable money while positively impacting the planet. Here are some ways to manage household waste.
1. Be proactive about reducing garbage at home
Anything can quickly become garbage, from clothes you no longer use to shopping bags. The first approach to efficiently managing household waste is consciously looking for new ways to reduce it. This approach requires massive lifestyle changes and being more conscious about waste generation. Start by identifying areas of your daily life or home that generate a lot of waste and think of what you can do differently. For example, if you’re used to shopping for groceries with a plastic bag, it’s time to consider reusable cloth bags instead.
2. Compost organic waste
Kitchen scraps, yard trimmings, and food leftovers form significant household waste. Thankfully, these are biodegradable, so you can easily turn them into compost instead of dropping them into your garbage bin. Composting organic waste will divert them from adding up at landfills while enriching your garden and lawn soil. Set up a compost bin in your backyard where you can drop food crap and yard waste. However, be careful not to add any dairy product or meat waste to avoid creating a foul odor. Another type of waste you should not add is pet poop. It might be biodegradable, but it’s not something you should compost. Instead, hire a professional pooper scooper if you don’t like handling pet poop.
3. Segregate waste at home
It’s advisable to segregate waste before disposing of it. Doing this can reduce how much you put out and make handling easier. It also allows for more efficient recycling, composting, and repurposing. You can segregate household waste into three types – dry, wet, and hazardous. Dry waste can include paper, plastic, metal, glass, broken furniture parts, and anything else you can easily reuse or recycle. Wet waste can include kitchen leftovers, tea leaves, fruit peels, fish scales, egg shells, and anything else you can compost, as mentioned in the previous point. However, car battery waste, broken gadgets, e-waste, used chemical containers, expired medicines and used cosmetic containers are hazardous waste. It would help to dispose of these daily and in a separate bin.
4. Find new ways to repurpose old items
This point will require some creativity. Not everything should be thrown away, as you can find new uses for old items. For example, you can get creative with old furniture parts, large pieces of broken glass or ceramic products, and metal. You can also turn old plastic containers and glass jars into storage containers and plant pots. Old and worn-out clothes can become cleaning rugs, and you can use old furniture pieces for various home renovation and repair projects.