What alternatives to the trash

Depending on your age or physical condition, you can sell or donate items that are most used. Through internet sites, garage sales or flea markets, it is easy today to sell or even to trade his old objects. You can choose to give your items to third parties or associations for reuse.

For this, some locations are equipped with a container to collect donations to the associations of objects in good condition.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

On a daily basis we use a lot of products or objects that become waste when used, damaged or broken. Before we buy them or throw them in the trash, did we apply the right strategy of the 3R “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” rule?

The 3R rule, what purpose?

It is to bring everyone to think about the prevention of the production of waste. It is indeed possible not to produce this waste by consuming better, producing better, prolonging the life of the products or throwing less.

food is wasted to the trash

Reduce food waste

The food waste is observed at all stages of the food chain and concerns all actors: producers, processors, distributors, restaurateurs, carriers … not to mention the consumer, even if it does not always feel like wasting. Indeed, every year an American person throws in the garbage on average 89kg of food waste. If a part, made up of bones and peelings is inevitable, it is estimated that the food waste represents between 20 and 30 kilos, including 7 kilos still packed.

Faced with this waste, let’s take some good simple gestures. Changes in habits allow everyone to reduce this food waste and save money because about $250 per person who go to the garbage every year: make a shopping list, cook the right portions, look at the expiration dates, cook your leftovers, store better in your fridge, ….

Alternatives to dangerous products

Home-cleaning, DIY or gardening products that appear innocuous in appearance, contain hazardous substances that pose significant risks to health and to the environment. Yet there are alternatives:
• For the maintenance of the house: make your own cleaning products based on white vinegar, black soap, baking soda, … or use eco-labeled products
• Pesticides: replace chemical weed control with manual removal for example, control disease by plant decoctions, or provide shelter for natural predators to control pests, etc.
• Do-it-yourself products: focus on acrylic and mineral paints or products with an environmental logo.

If you still use dangerous products, take all precautions for their use and removal!

How to get rid of dangerous products?

One place: special locations created for this purpose.

Reduce the toxicity of the trash

An aerosol can, a pot of paint, bleach, … these products that we use every day are everywhere in the house. Containing toxic or dangerous substances, their storage or treatment must be subject to special precautions or they may have a negative impact on the environment and our health. Toxic waste must therefore be dumped!

How to recognize them? They carry a pictograms representing danger.

Develop reuse and repair

Whether it’s clothes, linens, shoes, but also bicycles, crockery, books, furniture, appliances, and more, give life to an object, when it is more useful, is easy and necessary. It is important to make the right choice in a waste reduction approach, to limit incineration or landfill.