I used to live in a house with a curb-side, all-you-can-fit-into-the-giant-bin recycling program. I loved it! We generated twice as much recycling material as we did actual waste, and boy, did I feel great about it! I was saving the world, one cereal box and hamburger meat foam tray at a time. Feeling all green and fuzzy.

Until the downsizing occurred, which moved me and my packaging into smaller digs with NO recycling program. As you know, if you’ve been doing something for years, suddenly not doing it leads to heaps of guilt. I struggled to throw our bags of “trash” into the dempsty-dumpster, knowing it wasn’t really trash; I was filling a landfill. The local recycling machines are fine if all you want to do is get your deposit back on beverage containers, but what about the Cheerios box?

Here are some options to help get back that green feeling again:

Find a friend w/ curbside recycling and ask if you can add your materials to their bin. If they are green and gracious, they’ll let you, but be a considerate squatter. Crush your cans, collapse your boxes, roll over your milk jugs- in other words, minimize the volume of material that you put into their bin. One of the families in our school carpool agreed to let us share their bin, so I just made my contribution while I was picking up their kids for school. Eventually I overwhelmed the bin so I’m loading my leaf bags full of recycling material into my carpool partner, Mike’s car trunk and he puts it into his bin. When he gets fed up, I’ll have to make a new friend…

You can also collect your materials and lug it to a local recycling center, which is a bit of a hassle, but you’ll feel better. The challenge will be allocating space to collect enough to make the schlepp.

Maybe we can get our apartment communities to install recycling bins. It makes sense- we’re using less space than homeowners, so we should be using less landfill space than them, as well. Let’s here it for our team!

One other way to be a part of the solution is to reduce the amount of packaging you are buying in the first place. Duh. Remember, it’s not just Recycle. It’s Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, so don’t skip the first two steps!

We can make less waste, as well. Buy green, look for less packaging, use reusable shopping bags (because how ridiculous is it to put your used plastic shopping bags into the bag recycling container at the grocery stores so they can process it into - wait for it - new shopping bags!)… go ahead, blog your ideas on this so we can all try new ways.

Feeling green and fuzzy again,

T

We all know being “Green” is the latest trend and it seems like everyone is trying to woe customers with their being “Green” message. And it’s not likely to stop anytime soon. Now it is your chance to let everyone know what your community is doing in the environmental category by blogging about it.  Many apartment communities are starting to switch to using solar energy to heat their pools. Not only is this a big savings for the community it is also saving our planet. Let people know the improvements you are making by blogging about it. Here are some ways you can green your community in big and small ways:

1. Buy 100% recycled copier and printing paper
2. Heat your pool with solar
3. Use green products for cleaning
4. Buy recycled paper towels, tissues, and bathroom tissue
5. Make sure you have recycle bins in your office and around the community
6. Install energy efficient light bulbs
7. Reduce print advertising and increase online advertising
8. Give incentives to encourage employees to live at the community, take public transportation, or ride a bike
9. Install a grey water system to water plantings and landscaping
10. Blog….yes blogging can help by encouraging others to go green as you have done.