Self Improvement Blogs

Does the very idea of reducing waste excite you? Me neither. We know that landfill is hurting our environment and our children’s and grand children’s planet. So what can we do about reducing our waste.

1. Measure How Much Waste you send to landfill and how much for recycling.

The average American produces 4.4lb of waste a day of which half 54% goes to dump. How do you compare. After we know where we are. We are then we are in a great position to do something about enhancing the situation.

2. Why do You Wish to Reduce Waste?

Reducing waste is the number 7 goal that people set for the New Year. Like to know the others my post Goals for the New Year looks into the 6 preferred and the way to stay on track.

Here in the Philippines reducing waste as an industrial necessity. With a ‘good ‘ wage being $4 a day you are really careful with what you buy and what you dump. I could give some examples, but the result's that Charito and I produce about 2lb of waste a week. What is your reason? Perhaps so that your grandkids do not have a ‘plastic necklace ‘ when they go swimming in the ocean.

3. Set up a Group to Reduce Waste.

Setting up a group to reduce waste will increase the likelihood of success several times over and make the method a lot more delightful. This group might be local, or on the internet using a social platform to chat about ways to reduce waste perhaps have a real challenge. To provide less than 3lbs of waste per person per week. That’s 10% of average and only 1.5Lb of waste or less going to landfill per head per week. That is the urgent figure, dump. Rubbish heap when correctly managed still leeches out and pollutes our water and soil. If we can, you can too.

4. Commence with the End in Mind

We feel like throw less waste, the simplest and most efficient is not to get it to begin with. The Filipino buys their eggs without a container. A container costs 6 pesos extra (15 cents). I was convinced that the eggs would break among the rest of the shopping, but they do not I have had 1 break involving 2 eggs in 12 months. Which I believe is perhaps less than I had in England. Leave the packaging at the store. In the United Kingdom stores are well kitted out to recycle, and doubtless are where you live too.

5. Buy Less to Waste Less.

Buy less to Waste Less, 8 out of 10 folks go shopping at supermarkets, and the shops have large promoting departments to entice us to buy more with buy two and get one free. In the Philippines is commonly buy one and take one, which is a nice ‘take’. The aim of these offers to get us to buy more.If we don't use this extra rather than us saving money it costs us and we finish up throwing it or giving it away. Approximately over 1/3 of your food is disposed of. So save money and produce less waste by buying less. Buy the amount you want for a meal. When I left the UK my food bill for the last few weeks was negligible as I eat up the meals that I’d frozen. But some were a bit old and needed to be thrown. Maybe you could have old frozen food too; also by buying less we feel freer as I look into in Life with One Suitcase and a Laptop, which is all I brought with me to the Philippines, and while having less isn’t for everybody for me it's been great.

6. Mineral Water Waste.

You know that 90% of the price of the water is in the packaging and promoting and that 44% of mineral water comes from municipal supplies. To stupendously cut down waste, if you do use mineral water use enormous bottles at home, which is less expensive, I pay 35 pesos for 5 gallons (Slightly below $1) and then have a re-usable glass at work together with at home. The average office worker throws away 600 plastic cups a year, that’s a lot plastic going towards rubbish heap.

7. Use Leftovers

Either use leftovers to make another meal or part of, if there’s not enough. Many restaurants concentrate on giving a taste of a meal, you can too. Or give the leftovers to neighbors or friends. I used to believe that was charity, and would feel embarrassed to give. I am not sure how you’d feel. But I've found in the Philippines that it’s very practical and agreeable way of reducing waste. Most homes have electricity, I live 5 minutes from the popular Alona beach on Panglao, and it’s beautifully rural which means that few people have refrigerators and in the tropics food does not keep, so we share or give to the hens.

8. Re-usable over Dispensable

If you happen to have a small kid possibly you use forever nappies. You use them once but they stay in rubbish heap forever. When we use throwaway diapers Which I'm unhappy to say we used on our first 3 kids I didn't give much thought to the fact that when. Bought that is as small as they get and when employed a lot larger, nor to the indisputable fact that each child uses between 8 to 10,000 nappies and then was potty trained. That is a large amount of rubbish heap for each kid. Re-usable appliances or if they have to have batteries, reusable batteries. This area I want to deal with as my mouse uses a lot of battery.

9. Smaller waste disposal

How huge is your trash container, not the one in the house, but the one outside? When shopping the supermarkets have nice big shopping carts, just made for filling. Employ a smaller shopping cart and you'll buy less, same goes for trash, employ a smaller trash container and you'll produce less trash.

10. Post and Waste

When I was in the UK I used to get 20 to 30 items a week, of which about 80% would must be recycled or binned. It doesn’t have to be that way. In the Philippines I have had 20 items of post in a year. 17 of them a regular magazine Bills and bank statements are recorded and filed electronically. It takes a bit of effort to get your name off junk mail lists and cancel all those publications that often do not get read, but it's a particularly freeing experience.

11. Reduce Office waste

There are several ways to reducing office waste. Perhaps the biggest is not to print out, No print outs, no storage needed.

12. Make Reducing Waste FUN

By making Reducing waste fun you may enjoy finding ways to reduce waste and you will do more of it. Involve youngsters if possible, as we are then training and having a great time simultaneously.

So there we have 12 paths to reduce waste. But if you do not suceeded at first, don't worry. Perhaps though you you could make 2012 the year when you start making real progress to living the Life of Your Dreams.

My Mantra is Live in the moment, its a present. Love Greatly and Unconditionally. Laugh at Life’s Challenges, funny things and self.

Bruce Kidson loves helping people give their dreams life so that they can enjoy a life with abundant wealth, vibrant good health and scintillating and empowering relationships. Through personal Life coaching. Which he shares with his clients and on his Personal Life Coaching Blog.