This article of the series of posts devoted the great initiative ‘365 Ways to Save the Earth' that was initiated by folks at Dumpster Rentals Cooperative (read the first article here: http://disposalbinrentals.com/blog/2011/oct/9/365-ways-to-save-the-earth/). The goal of the movement is to raise awareness of environmental problems and issues. We wanted to share with the community of North America consumers some proposals and recommendations on what each of us and all of us can do to protect our planet from pollutants, how we can save not-renewable resources and how we can protect wildlife.

Tidal Wave of Deadly Plastic

A young sea turtle, undernourished and unable to dive for food, was found on a beach in Hawaii. It died two days later. George Balazs, a sea turtle biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, dissected the turtle to discover the cause of death.

He found a plastic food storage bag filled with garbage, some pieces of pumice stone, a plastic golf tee, shreds of bag sheeting, bits and pieces of plastic fishing line, a plastic flower, part of a bottle cap, a comb, chips of Styrofoam, and dozens of small round pieces of plastic.

"The intestine was completely blocked with this stuff," reported Balazs.

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In December 1982, adults and children across the US prepared for Christmas. Carols rang out on radio and television. People hurried through shopping malls buying toys and gifts. Families and friends strung lights around the rooftops and decorated stately Christmas trees. There was a holiday feeling in the air in cities and towns everywhere. Everywhere except Times Beach, Missouri.

Modern-day ghost town

In early December, citizens of this small community just southwest of St. Louis received some shocking news from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The news not only ruined their Christmas celebration, but for many, it ruined their lives, as well. Samples of soil revealed that the town had been drenched in dioxin, one of the most toxic (poisonous) chemicals known. Even one drop of dioxin in ten thousand gallons of liquid, or one part of dioxin per billion parts of soil, is considered highly hazardous.

The contamination had actually begun nine years earlier when local officials hired a man to spread oil on ten miles of unpaved streets in order to keep down the summer dust. They did not know at the time that the oilman's truck was also filled with sludge-soft, mud-like waste-from a chemical factory. The sludge contained the deadly dioxin. For at least two...

This post was prepared and published with the help of environmentally concerned members of Roll Off Dumpster Rentals Cooperative : Dumpster Rentals in Hamilton , ON, Dumpster Rentals in Seattle , WA, Dumpster Rentals in Sacramento , CA, Dumpster Rentals in Phoenix and Roll Off Containers Phoenix , AZ.

Do you have any idea how big your garbage footprint is? And what kind of waste you create? Start with your bedroom. What do you throw out? How often do you empty your wastebasket? What about garbage in other parts of your house -the kitchen,...

People throw many things into the garbage without thinking about whether they are safe. A number of dangerous chemicals are used in the home, and if they get into the environment, they can harm wildlife.

Chemicals in the garden shed

Many harmful chemicals may be found in the garden shed or garage. These include pesticides, weed killers, and slug pellets. There may be cans of old paint, paint thinner, or antifreeze. All of these chemicals could harm the environment if they were washed down the drain, leaked out of the garbage, or were dumped in a landfill.

Chemicals for cleaning

The cupboard under the kitchen sink is often packed with cleaning materials such as bleach and other chemicals. Some are so powerful that the person using them must wear protective gloves. Such contents should never be dumped down the sink or put in the garbage without being securely wrapped to prevent leaks.

Paint contains harmful chemicals. Leftover paint should never be dumped down the drain or sink. There is usually somewhere in your local area where paint can be disposed of safely. Contact your local authority to find out the location of the hazardous waste station. As an alternative you...

Recycling glass bottles 

Bottles to be recycled are collected at recycling centers. The glass is crushed to form cullet, which is transported to glass factories.
Glass is made from sand, soda ash, and limestone. Additives may be used to give the glass a color or to make it more resistant to heat. These raw materials are heated in a furnace to 3,272°F (1 ,800°C)'so they melt. The molten glass is poured into molds to form new bottles. Cullet is usually added to the furnace with the raw materials, so fewer raw materials are required to rT,Jake the glass.
Clear glass is the most valuable because it has many uses. A lot of brown glass is used for beer bottles. Green glass is the least useful and is used mostly for wine bottles. Glass also can be recycled to make garden paving, decorative jewelry, and a road surface called glasphalt.

Make sure that every glass bottle and glass container used by your family is recycled. There is plenty of glass recycling centers. Local authorities have recycling facilities that will accept glass. In many places glass is collected from home. Contact your local authorities to find out the location of the nearest recycling center that accept glass. You may also seek an advice from local private waste...

Paper is an incredibly useful material that is used in newspapers, magazines, and books. One of its most common uses is in packaging for food and other goods. Some paper, such as newspaper, is already made from recycled paper. Most other paper can also be recycled after use.

From paper bank to paper mill

Paper to be recycled must be sorted, graded, and baled before it can be  transported to a paper mill.  In the paper mill, the recycled paper   is broken up into a pulp.  It is then mixed with lots of water and chemicals to make a mush that is used to form paper.

The runny mush is spread out over a moving belt of the paper machine, and the water drains away. The paper is now a continuous layer and is passed through a series of heated rollers so that it is flattened, dried, and ironed to give it a polished surface.  Finally the paper is rolled onto huge reels and taken into cutting room to be cut into sheets.

Fiber

If you look at paper under a microscope, you will see that it is made from lots of fibers that are mashed together. The longer fiber is, the better quality paper. However, each time paper is recycled, fibers get shorter. Shorter lengths of fiber make poorer quality paper such as...

Incinerators & 3R Approach

Incinerators are places where waste is burned. Some modern incinerators use the heat produced by the burning waste to generate electricity. These incinerators are called Waste-to-energy plants. There are problems with Incinerators, though. The smoke from incinerators may contain dangerous chemicals such as dioxin. Tiny quantities of this  chemical can cause ill health or even kill people. 

Better to recycle 

Much of the waste that ends up in landfills and incinerators could be recycled. If it is recycled, it can be used to make something else. This is much better for the environment.

The three "R's" of managing waste are "reduce," "reuse," and "recycle:' Reduce means to cut down on the amount of waste, reuse means to put something to a new use or to fix it rather than throw it away, and recycle means to make a material into a new product. 

Reduce and reuse It is much better to not produce any waste in the first place. If less waste is thrown away, there is less waste to bury in landfills or burn in incinerators. For example, disposable diapers are a substantial part of household waste in houses where there is a baby. This could be avoided by using washable diapers. The...

Every day we throwaway mountains and tons of waste. This includes packaging from food and goods, paper and envelopes, cans and bottles, plastic bags, kitchen waste, junk furniture, and much more.  More people, more waste.

As the number of people in the world increases, so does the amount of waste. However, not all parts of the world produce the same amount of waste. A typical home in a developed country such as the United States, United Kingdom (UK), France or Germany produces many times more waste than a home in a developing country such as Kenya, Ghana, or India. For example, on average, a person in the U.S. produces about 5.5 Ibs (2 kg) of waste per day, a person in Europe produces about 2.4 Ibs (1.1 kg) per day, while a person living in India produces just over 1.1 Ib (0.5 kg) of waste per day.

Thrown away

As people earn more money, they buy more goods, especially electrical goods  and luxury items. They throw away more, too. The world is changing from one where people repaired broken goods or reused them to one in which broken objects are tossed away and replaced by new ones. The manufacturing of all of these goods  is using up the world's resources.

Harming the environment ...

You may by now be wondering what happens when paper made from recycled paper is finished with? Can it be recycled again? In other words, can paper be recycled indefinitely?
The simple answer to this last question is no. Although some types of paper can be recycled several times over, there is a limit. Plant fibers, including wood and cotton, are made up of cellulose. Each time they are pulped, the fibers become shorter and weaker. Once they have reached the very lowest grade, any further pulping would be useless. Anything made from them would tend to crumble and fall apart.

Fibers in the lowest grade are suitable for products that will not be recycled. One obvious example is toilet paper, which is disposed of through the sewage system. But there is another way to tackle the problem of deterioration in the case of white paper. This is to make sure that paper which is likely to be recycled always contains a proportion of "virgin" material. For example, some paper is made from half new fibers and half once recycled material. When this paper is itself recycled, it can be mixed with virgin fiber again, half and half. This time the paper produced will be made up of one quarter of once-recycled fibers, and one quarter of twice-recycled fibers; but one half will still be new fibers. And so on.

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Waste paper arrives at the recycling mill in enormous bales. The waste has been compressed tightly and bound with wire, so a single bale can weigh about a ton. This has the advantage that a lot of scrap can be stored in a small space, and it also helps reduce transportation costs.
A recycling mill using wastepaper or rags works in a similar way to a mill using logs or hemp (sometimes called "virgin materials"). The central idea is still to break down the raw materials so thoroughly that all the tiny fibers are separated and weakened. Just as when wood chips are used, the waste is mixed with huge quantities of water and reduced to a pulp, before being passed through tanks to be cleaned. It is easy to see that breaking down waste paper is quicker and easier than breaking down wood. This is one way that savings of fuel and energy are made.

However, pulp made from recycled paper does present an important problem of its own. People who give their waste paper for recycling are asked to remove things such as

paper clips or rubber bands, and mills recycling magazines have a way to remove staples. Other things are harder to get rid of. Mixed in with the fibers are various substances added when the original product was made. Non solvent glues are particularly difficult to deal with as they clog...