By now, you should already be aware of the waste crisis the entire world is facing. Households are consuming a lot more plastic waste than they ought to, and the dependence on single-use plastics is also quite shocking. The bigger your household size is, the more waste you’re going to have. And if you can’t stay on top of the proper management of your household waste, you’re only going to be overwhelmed by the trash in your home.
If there’s any change you can create in your home, it’s a better household waste management plan. This means not just reducing the use of plastics and nonrecyclables but also being more responsible with the disposal of waste. Overall, a clean home is always nice to come home to, and this you can never have if your bins are regularly overflowing with rubbish.
With that said, here are seven tips you can apply at home for better household management of your waste.
1. Schedule A Regular Collection Of Trash
If you haven’t already, now’s a good time for you to start getting in touch and signing up for the services of a rubbish collection company like Cheapest Load Of Rubbish. As its name suggests, it’s a company that’d go to your house, pick up your trash, and dispose of it properly. This company also sorts through your rubbish. Those that can be recycled are sent to junk shops and recycling plants so only the biodegradables are left to be sent to the landfills.
If you allow such a service provider to pick up your trash regularly, your home would become a lot cleaner. Your bins won’t be filled with trash to the brim and your home would smell fresher as well.
Aside from a rubbish removal company, there may be junkyards, recycling plants, and donation drives who will pick up junk for free. You can also make use of their services so your trash at home won’t pile up.
2. Refrain From Buying Unnecessary Things
One of the surest ways you can manage your household waste better is to avoid having so much trash in the first place. Stop buying things you won’t need. Focusing on the bare minimum doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to deprive yourself of life’s pleasures. It simply means you’re making wiser decisions and ensuring every single item you buy lasts long in your house and every food item you shop won’t go to waste. And if you can minimize your household’s dependence on plastic and paper products, that’d be great, too.
3. Shop With Reusable Bags
Another way to manage your household waste is to reduce the coming in of plastics to your home. This starts with the habit of shopping with reusable bags. When you bring your own bags to shop, you won’t need to purchase supermarket plastic bags.
At home, if you see your under-the-sink storage filling up with a mountain of plastic bags you won’t even get to use, it’s giving you a sign. It’s definitely worth thinking about shopping with reusable bags.
4. Avoid Food Wrapped In Plastic
Take a good look around your local supermarket. Now that you’re more conscious about your decisions, it’s probably going to shock you how there’s so much food unnecessarily wrapped in plastic. This includes fruit and vegetables and meat, among many others. Once you bring these food items home, the plastic wrappers make it to no other than your trash bins. And that’s unnecessary plastic.
Therefore, whenever you can, it’s a better choice to shop from your local farmer’s market or perhaps your weekend market. If you have local butchers, support those shops as well. You can bring your own produce bags or reusable containers in which to put all the items you wish to buy. When you get home, you won’t have to worry about unwrapping your food items and throwing the plastic wrappers away. Your bins won’t have to be as full of unnecessary plastics, too.
5. Buy In Bulk
Buying in bulk turns out to be a more cost-effective means in the long run and is also environment-friendly. When you buy in bulk, this means less packaging to dispose of regularly. On the other hand, you’re disposing of so much more trash with small packaging as it needs more wrappers than the bigger bags do.
For instance, it may be more convenient to have small packets of coffee, but the tiny cups they come along with aren’t environment-friendly. Hence, it’s better to buy a big bag of coffee, decant this in your pantry, have it last longer, and thereby dispose of less plastic waste.
6. Have Your Own Reusable Bottles
When you’re in a household with young children, it’s often inevitable to bring home or buy small juice boxes and small bottles of mineral water. This is especially true when your kids start to go to nursery school and have to bring their own snacks.
Rather than buying water bottles for your kids, make them bring their own reusable bottles for their water. And instead of buying juice bottles and boxes, you can prepare juice at home and place it in reusable bottles. You can also practice the same, whether for your water or coffee run. When you have this habit, you aren’t just practicing sustainability. But you’re also serving your family healthier beverages when you’re making your own fruit juices from home.
7. Reduce Food Waste
When you study what goes into your household waste regularly, it may not just be the plastic items that are filling it up. There could also be a lot of unnecessary food waste and scraps. If you have pets at home, your food scraps have somewhere else to go than the bins. But if you don’t, it’s inevitable to throw those food scraps away.
This is downright wasteful, however. Although they’re biodegradable, they can still make landfills full and perhaps even cause the spread of bacteria and, hence, diseases. Rather than throwing food scraps, you may want to minimize such waste through meal planning. This way, you only shop for what you absolutely need. However, if you can’t avoid having any food waste, you can use it as compost for your garden rather than throw it away.
Conclusion
If you haven’t been giving a second thought about the waste you’re discarding, now’s the time you definitely should. The environmental cause is still very much alive, and there’s a greater need to practice sustainable ways now more than ever. And like any other kind of change you’d apply in your life, change begins at home.
Proper waste management involves thinking of garbage as a valuable resource so that you’re more conscious about what you’re throwing away. If your waste at home has been getting out of hand, the tips above can hopefully bring you back to a more efficient household waste management system.