How To Organize And Improve Recycling At Home (Week 3)
Getting your items disposed of in the right place can be frustrating. Especially if you don’t have systems setup in your home that are easy to use, look good, and are understood by everyone in the household. By organizing waste systems, you can improve recycling at home. Here are some tips for setting you up for success!
Amanda Drews, 12 minute read
In this post, we’ll talk about:
- Considerations before deciding on a waste system
- Establishing recycling and waste systems in the home and how they will be taken care of
- The different recycling and waste systems you may want in your home
- Examples of how to set these waste systems up.
- Prefer to watch and listen to the video instead? Click HERE!
I keep saying systems. What I really mean is a way station. A resting place for our waste before it goes off to it’s final destination. You could skip this step all together in our 52 Week Challenge if you are willing to bring every piece of trash, recycling and compost to wherever it is supposed to end up. But that doesn’t sound very practical or sustainable to me.
I love trash just lying around my house everywhere.
No one ever
The main goal here is to have areas around your home that function as a holding place for our trash before it heads into the waste stream. Some considerations may be:
- What type of waste do we produce? Usually trash, hopefully recycling, food waste, used items.
- What type of facilities exist in the area we live? Recycling center, landfill, commercial composting site, thrift store, consignment shop, special plastics drop-off locations.
- How do we get our waste from our home to those facilities? A garbage truck comes and picks it up from our curb, we have to drive our recycling over, or we take public transportation. Some transportation issues may be big barriers depending on where you live and how you get around.
- Where will our waste live while it’s still in our home? The garage bin, in a pull out drawer, the freezer, a bin on the counter, or a bag in the storage room? Is there space for this? Is it safe in that spot?
- Who will be responsible for making sure waste gets delivered to those facilities? Is one person in the home responsible? Are duties shared? If they are shared, how do you know who is going to take care of it?
- When will that have to happen by? The garbage truck comes on Tuesday so have trash out by then. Whenever the compost starts smelling.
- Does everyone know EXACTLY what goes into each site? Put up a sticker, use labels or print off a sign if needed. We have a sticker right on the side of our recycling that has pictures of what can go in there so the kids can start learning about recycling. Learn the Rules of Recycling and adjust for your hauler.
Get together with the members of your household and figure these things out.
Many of us know we have trash and curbside recycling that goes out once a week. But do you know if there is a composting program in your town? How about special items such as electronics or furniture? Get familiar with what your area has to offer for getting rid of those items that may not be suitable for the trash or recycling bins. For example, Dakota County has the Recycling Guide, which helps residents search for some of those tough items.
Determine who is responsible in your home for making sure each site is taken care of in a timely manner. Nobody wants to have to complain over and over for someone to take out the trash. If it helps, put a reminder in your calendar on your phone to check your site each night or week.
Take into account the resources you have.
The space needed for storing waste, the time it takes to dump compost. Are there ever days you drive by the compost drop-off site? Combine trips to cut down on gas and time. What existing items do you have in your home that you could use? Can you upcycle a container instead of buying something new to hold your waste?
Areas of your home you may need to make a place for:
A list of things you need or are looking out for
This falls under pre-cycling. Knowing what you want or need so you don’t buy extras or the wrong thing. This should cut down on waste in the end. Some people may find it helpful to have a physical list written out and posted. Others may find it handier and more convenient to have a document in their phones or use a digital shopping list.
Trash and Curbside Recycling
I’m guessing you already have one or two bins inside your house for this. I have both bins in a slide out drawer under the counter. Before our kitchen was remodeled, we only had the trash under the counter. That way the dogs couldn’t get into it. We kept the recycling in a stand alone container on the ground. There shouldn’t be as much of a problem with pets getting into recycling since items should be clean.
My parents just put their recycling in the curbside bin in their garage. It is only 15 feet away from the kitchen on the main level so it is pretty accessible and frees up the room they would otherwise need for a bin in the kitchen.
Special Plastics Recycling For Bags, Film, and Wrap
These are the items that will be brought to drop-off sites. You may have also heard this lovingly referred to as the “Bags of Bags”. You can use a plastic bag itself to contain your other plastics. I’ve done just that before, but now prefer to keep that main bag in a basket just so it looks a little nicer since it is right in the center of our home. Make it a convenient place for both putting them away and so you can remember to take them to the store.
We have a mounted bag holder on the wall for keeping the nicer bags that we can reuse for dog poop bags, transporting wet swimsuits etc. The wall mounted ones are nice because they can only hold so much and won’t be spilling out all over the place. Please make sure you have them out of reach of young kids since they are a suffocation hazard.
Composting
Whether you compost at home or bring it to a commercial facility, you’ll need a place to store it before it leaves your home. I have a bamboo composting pail for the backyard for mostly fruits and veggies. It lives on the kitchen counter by the sink and gets taken out a couple times a week. The rest of our organics go to a commercial composting site and live in the freezer in a plastic tub that originally held toy dinosaurs (see what I did there! Reusing!) Although the county provides us with green bags to use, we have decided to buy the 13-gallon Unni bags because they are larger and more durable to line our freezer bin with.
Keeping a bin in the freezer eliminates any smells and the kids can reach it down there. This may be good thing or a bad thing depending on how old your kids are. Yes, our youngest one has pulled food out of there before! When that bin is full, I bring it out to the garage and seal it in a large, also reused, bucket. It will fit about 3 bags from the freezer before I have to take it to the commercial drop-off site about once a month. I go more often in the summer when it gets hot and stinky sitting in the garage.
Your backyard compost site will need a good chunk of space. Try to find ground that is level and will get a bit of sunlight. Be aware that there may be a smell sometimes, so I wouldn’t put it right next to where you hang out a lot. You do want it to be convenient enough that you will actually be able to to access it to dump your compost and use it.
I have this big plastic compost bin in our yard that I got from Home Depot. First of all, I hate it! The cover breaks off all the time and I can’t open it with one hand (since the compost pail is usually in the other.) Second, I see used compost bins available for free all the time on Nextdoor. I wish I would gotten a used tumbler style bin.
Household Hazardous Waste
These are the some of the most dangerous items you will find in the home that need to go to a special recycling center. Where I live, we have The Recycling Zone but you’ll have to check out what’s available in your area. We keep a box in the garage higher up on the workbench (so the kids can’t get to it). The container has to go with the items when brought to our recycling center so we just use a cardboard box.
Items To Be Donated
My kids grow like bamboo! Since they are constantly growing I keep a donation bin in each of their closets. We keep a general donation bin in the storage room for adult clothes and other items as well. I try to give things away to friends and family first, then I’ll throw them up on Facebook Marketplace or Nextdoor, maybe Craigslist.
Typically Goodwill is my last choice but I do frequently drop off things there. Especially if I plan on buying something for myself so I can get my coupon. I sometimes get crazy overwhelmed by the amount of things sitting around and don’t want to wait. That happens. A better bet would be to look into any shelters, Rotary or church drives going on in your area. Google “consignment stores near me” to see if there are any places that may give you a few bucks for your items.
Corks, Cooking Oil, Aluminum Foil, Paper Scraps, Can Lids
Below our sink, we keep a spot for some items that need a bit of time to build up. There is a large envelope with scraps of paper that will be stapled shut so they can be recycled curbside. We save Aluminum foil up and scrunch it together to make a ball at least 3 inches in diameter that can go in curbside recycling as well. Corks go to the Recycling Zone and they also take used cooking oil to use as a binding agent in dog food. We keep our paper towels below the sink to encourage the more visible reusable towels higher up.
Set up systems at work!
I am lucky to work in a place with excellent systems for sorting waste. Not every workplace has a 12 foot high compost heap on site! Some workplaces may not offer services such as recycling or composting. Take a look around your workplace and see what systems are in place for waste disposal. Ask people in charge of the building what you have or don’t have for waste management and why. See what you can do to advocate for your workplace to go a little greener. Do an informal waste audit. You don’t have to literally go digging around in the garbage (that may raise some eyebrows), but just take note of what is being thrown into the bins in general.
Making your workplace greener could even get you noticed by a higher up as a “take charge” and “driven” employee! Eco-friendly practices within companies are often used to promote businesses. Have a plan ready to present to your boss on how it will benefit the company as a whole. Here’s another thought. If they say they don’t want to improve, do you even want to spend your life working for a company that doesn’t care about the environment?
In our county, there are grants and training available for businesses. This ranges from having a master recycler come in and talk to employees about waste, getting bins, labels, or applying for up to $10,000 in funding to improve waste management in the workplace.
Keep waste management in mind while hosting events
Having a party, baby shower or just inviting a few friends over for a BBQ? Make sure they know exactly what to do with their waste when they are done. I like to set out three bins with labels in a row so it’s obvious what goes where. A blue recycling container for cans and bottles, a paper bag for organics and a trash bin with a plastic bag for garbage. The labels are especially important for the compost. Let your guests know if their utensils such as plates, napkins and silverware are compostable. Make it easy though! All or nothing. You don’t want to be fishing things out of the bins after the party.
1). Set up these systems in your home according to what you have available for you in your community and the resources in your home.
2). Talk with your family about each spot and who is responsible for making sure it ends up in the right place and when.
3). Look around your workplace for improvement in waste management and then act on it.
4). Make special signage for when you have parties or gatherings. Decide what bins you will use for those. Keep the sign where you store the compostable items you will use for the next event.
5). Continue learning about waste in our Waste 101 series HERE in Week 4!
