Install energy-saving window shades
Buy or make insulating shades or drapes. Adding insulating window treatments can block up to 62% of heat transfer through your windows.
It is important to make sure that the window shades, blinds or drapes you install are tight fitting within your window frame and are made from insulating material. Look for a higher R-Value to indicate that a window treatment is insulating.
Check out this article from The US Department of Energy to learn more about efficient types of window coverings and other materials to look out for.
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 Waste
The average American generates 5 pounds of garbage every day! Garbage doesn’t just take up space, it takes lots of energy to pickup, transport, store, process and bury. Plus most of our waste releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as it decomposes in the landfill. Reducing your garbage by just 25% will save over 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted every year(1)!
You can cut your waste even more by being conscious of the packaging on the products you buy, reusing, recycling, avoiding unnecessary bags and containers as well as composting or participating in Food Plus.
In a lifetime, the average American is responsible for 29 million pounds of waste. Take action to reduce your contribution to landfills!
How do I do this?
There are lots of strategies for reducing the amount of garbage your household creates. A good place to start is by scheduling your garbage to only be picked up once or twice a month instead of every week. This will help you monitor your garbage. You’ll know you need to do more and waste less if it is always full or overflowing. There are a number of actions you can take to reduce your waste:
Why should I do this?
The average person generates about 5 pounds of garbage per day(1). About 1 pound of carbon dioxide
is released for every pound of garbage as it decays in landfills(2) - and a whole lot more is emitted just to
transport it there. Reducing your garbage by just 25% will save and average of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide pollution per year(3).
If you go from weekly trash pickup to monthly you’ll prevent almost 1.5 tons!
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Recycle everything from paper and plastic to electronics to construction materials. You’ll save energy and natural resources - recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.
How do I do this?
You might be surprised what can be recycled these days. Visit Sanitary Service Company’s website for details on curbside recycling services and what can be recycled. If you don’t live in Bellingham, or you have recyclables that are not picked up curbside, call the Recycling Hotline at 360-384-8040 or 360-676-5723 for information about what can be recycled and where to take it. Here is a list of just some of the things that can be recycled:
Curbside:
- Glass bottles and jars
- Plastic bottles
- NEW - plastic tubs, jars, container and bucket up to 1 gallon. (Yes, you can now recycle yogurt containers and similar plastics!)
- Paper, newspaper, magazines, phone books, etc…
- Cardboard
- Motorcycle/car batteries, motor oil and scrap metal
- Electronics (Computers, TVs, phones, stereos, etc…) - Additional fees required
- Food scraps and yard waste - (Food Plus Service)
Scheduled pick-up or drop-off:
- Appliances
- Electronics
- Construction materials (Asphalt, metal glass, plastic sheeting, drywall, etc..)
- Automobiles
- And a whole lot more! Call the Recycling Hotline for details: 360-384-8040 or 360-676-5723
Don’t forget: recycling is a much better alternative to throwing stuff away but recycling still requires energy and generates greenhouse gases. Buying less or buying goods with less packaging will reduce your impact even more.
Why should I do this?
Americans throw away 7 million cars a year, 2 million plastic bottles every hour, and enough aluminum cans
annually to make 6,000 DC10 airliners. Recycling materials helps reduce the need to extract natural
resources and burn fossil fuels in order to create new material. Recycled aluminum processing saves
95% of the energy of virgin material processing; paper savings are 25% to 45%; glass is 31%, steel, 61% and
plastic is 57% to 75%(1).
Most of what we throw away can be reused. An increased recycling effort can result in a major reduction in
landfill space and carbon dioxide emissions from waste collection as well as major reductions in mining,
deforestation and oil drilling. For example, you prevent approximately one pound of carbon dioxide
emissions for every three aluminum cans you recycle(2). That may not sound like a lot, but when you
get millions of people each recycling hundreds of cans every year it really adds up! Recycling more
will also increase the demand for recyclable products and products made from recycled materials.
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Before recycling or trashing something reuse it! Even if you don’t have a use for it there’s a good chance someone else will.
How do I do this?
Get creative and reuse everything until it is no longer useful. Wash and reuse Ziploc bags, dairy containers, juice bottles, etc. as many times as possible before sending them to the trash or recycling. If you have items you don’t need anymore like old books, clothes, furniture, kids stuff, tools, electronics, appliances, etc., find someone who can reuse them. You can place free ads in the Echo, the Bellingham Herald, Craigslist or Freecycle to give your old stuff away, or take it to a local thrift store. You can call the Recycling Hotline at 360-676-5723 for more information on who can reuse your old stuff. However you go about it, make throwing something away an absolute last resort, and remember that reuse is better than recycling.
Why should I do this?
While recycling is much better than throwing something away, it still requires a good deal of energy to collect, sort, process, and recycle a product. Using products to their fullest potential and only resorting to recycling or the garbage as a last resort will have much more of an impact than simply recycling everything we use. Even if you only use everything twice instead of just once, you have just cut your impact in half. Some items can be used many times and bring your contribution to the waste stream closer to zero.
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Transform your food waste from garbage to fertile, reusable compost. This will really cut down on the amount of waste you send to landfills - composting can reduce home owner curbside trash by 25% to 40%. Nature doesn’t produce waste so why should you?
How do I do this?
The easiest way to compost your food waste is to participate in SSC’s Food Plus! program. For a small monthly fee, you can have curbside pickup of yard waste, food scraps and food-soiled paper twice a month. You’ll get a 60 gallon toter (just like your curbside garbage can) to put compostable materials in. The cost can usually be offset by reducing your regular garbage pickup to just once or twice a month since a large portion of your trash can now be composted. Click here to sign up for Food Plus!, get current rates or learn more about the program.
The other option is to start your own compost. Compost bins or worm bins can be purchased locally or you can build your own. Click the links for more information about composting or worm bins.
You can also call the Recycling Hotline at 360-384-8040 or 360-676-5723 for more information about food and yard waste options.
Why should I do this?
Composting is a great way to cut down on your trash and get a reusable product out of your garbage can.
Backyard composting requires no fossil fuels and you can use the fresh compost right in your garden.
By composting you can save about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually, and using your own
compost to fertilize your garden saves you about $10 per yard of compost!(1)
The Food Plus! program takes scraps just up the road to Green Earth Technologies (GET) in Lynden where they are naturally processed into compost that is sold right here in Whatcom County.
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Register your address on a national Do Not Mail list and stop unwanted junk mail. You’ll save natural resources and energy, not to mention space in your mail-person’s bag.
How do I do this?
There are a few options for stopping junk mail.
Get help: You can sign-up with the 41pounds.org service and they’ll contact 20-35 direct mail companies to remove your household from marketing databases. This will eliminate between 80%-95% of your household’s junk mail along with specified catalogs for 5 years. The cost is $41 and $15 of that fee will go to directly RE Sources. So, if you do sign-up for the 41pounds.org service, please select RE Sources as the organization you’d like to support.
Do it yourself: Spend an afternoon calling the companies that send you unwanted catalogs and then register with a national Do Not Mail list. Optoutprescreen and Direct Mail both have registries that take you off national mailing lists. These registries will get rid of most of your junk mail but you may still need to contact anyone who continues sending you unwanted junk mail. Don’t forget to recycle any junk mail you do get.
Why should I do this?
Here are just a few facts about junk mail in the U.S:
- More than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail arrives in American mail boxes each year - that’s the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months(1).
- The production and disposal of direct mail consumes more energy than 3 million cars(2).
- U.S. companies sent 35 billion pieces of direct postal mail in 1980, 64 billion pieces in 1990, 90 billion pieces in 2000, and 100 billion pieces in 2005. That’s more than 300 pieces of bulk mail for every man, woman, and child(3)!
- One study says Americans throw away 44% of bulk mail unopened, yet still spend 8 months per lifetime opening bulk mail(4).
- Fifty-five percent of Americans “dislike” and 26% “despise” getting internet disks in the mail, while 1.9% “really appreciate” them(5).
Check out http://www.newdream.org/Junkmail/facts.php for more facts.
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If every U.S. home viewed and paid its bills online, the switch would cut solid waste by 1.6 billion tons a year and curb carbon dioxide emissions by 2.1 million tons a year(1).
How do I do this?
The easiest thing to do is talk to your bank about online bill pay. This often allows you to pay all your bills online through your bank. Make sure you contact the companies you pay your bills to and ask them to send you electronic statements. If your bank does not offer online bill pay you can often pay bills electronically by setting up an online account with your service providers.
Why should I do this?
Creating, mailing and disposing of bills requires a lot of resources and generates millions of pounds of carbon dioxide every year. Electronic bill pay can save trees, carbon dioxide time and money. With stamp prices increasing you might be surprised when you calculate how much you’ll save by switching to online payments. If you pay just five monthly bills online you’ll save about $25 every year.
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