Whenever I go out to eat with my family, I think about how ridicoulsly oversized the portions are. I know few people are ever able to finish everything on their plate at a restaraunt, and the rest usually just let the waiters through out the food. This happens at home too when you serve too much and then scrape the rest in the garbage. When I was researching this topic, I found the statistics staggering, especially considering how many poeple are starving around the world. Solutions to this problem could be composting, bringing a reusable container to a restaraunt to take home the rest, and serving less at home and eating leftovers. Everyone gets tired of leftovers, especially after Thanksgiving. I read a newspaper article the other day about how to use the food from Thanksgiving to make different recipes instead of eating the same thing for three days in a row. I have made a few of these items and they are great!

There are many ways to decrease your carbon footprint. Switching your lightbulbs to fluorescent, using a hybrid car, wind energy, carpooling, reducing, reusing, and recycling paper, etc. It is very easy to do many of the fifteen suggestions listed on the website below. If all people around the world could choose a couple things to help reduce their carbon footprint, we could all benefit from it and help the earth.

We use a tremendous amount of plastic every year. We have already used around 450,000,000,000 plastic bags this year. We could decrease this number if we use reusable bags when we go to the grocery store or when we go shopping. We can also reduce our use of plastic by using our own silverware. We use around 40 billion plastic untensils each year instead of reusing our own silverware. These are some easy steps that will make a big difference in the world.

Everyone knows that after using a water bottle once you don’t have to throw it away. You can continuously fill it up and use it over and over, but since Christmas is coming up and everyone knows your mom likes it better when you give her homemade stuff. So instead of throwing out that plastic water bottle you can make a vase out of it. You can paint the sides or just glue pictures onto it. Some more cool things you can make at home are weights, cleaning liquid container, or even a bank. These are just a few nifty websites you can use to make something new of your water bottle:
http://www.ehow.com/info_8279546_cool-things-do-water-bottle.html
http://www.make-stuff.com/recycling/plastic_bottles.html

It’s amazing when you take a little time to see how many reusable things there are for us out in the world. I searched on google to find some examples and immediately found so many things. Some examples of the reusable and repurposable products that we could use include reusable drink containers instead of paper or plastic cups and bottles. Also, I remember when I was in elementary and middle school, we would be required to cover our books with paper covers. Well, instead of using paper covers, we could all easily use the stretchy cloth covers that can be reused. Another thing that is really beneficial is products that can be recharged so that we aren’t constantly having to replace batteries. I was able to find even more products just by searching in google, but I can’t name them all, so I really encourage you all to look them up and maybe even buy those instead of the other things that away we can all use reusable products to help make a difference in our world.

There is no stopping some people when it comes to fashion. The new season, latest trend, and the newest style requires buying more new clothes. I know I love to shop and many people do. But what do you do with your old clothes that you don’t want anymore. According to http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.115-a449, “Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year, and clothing and other textiles represent about 4% of the municipal solid waste.” Now all that clothing that you don’t want anymore could be put to good use by giving it to the less fortunate or donating it to good causes. Before I do my shopping every season I clean on my closet, I take the clothes that don’t fit, I don’t like, or are out of style and I either give them to Good Will or some other clothing donation site. Another thing I love to do is donate some items to places where people up-cycle clothing. By up-cycling clothing you can turn out-of-style pieces in-style clothing. Any of these ways to recycle, re-purpose, and for others to reuse your out-of-date clothes is really helping your carbon footprint. It’s great to have to new trends and show your style, but make sure you’re being eco-friendly about where your old clothes go. What are some organizations you like to donate your clothes to?

Instead of throwing away your plastic bags you should bring those bags to a store that is collecting used plastic bags that they will recycle and reuse. Also when you’re going shopping anywhere, instead of getting new plastic bags every time you could reuse some plastic bags that you already have or you could bring your own reusable bags. According to http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/plastic-bag-facts.html, 60,000 plastic bags are being used every second. And that’s only plastic bags, there’s also plastic wrapping and packaging that many people are using. There is a list of things that you can bring to any place collecting used plastic bags on this website, http://www.plasticbagfacts.com/Main-Menu/Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.aspx?gclid=COXondvO0qwCFcNeTAodC3r2rQ#recycle, and there is also some information on reducing, reusing, and recycling plastic bags.

After I calculated my carbon footprint, I became more aware of the things that I was doing on a regular basis such as forgetting to turn out the lights or not using a reusable bag when going shopping. Now, I try to always turn out my lights and my family and I always shop with reusable bags. We keep recycling bins in our house and try to reuse whatever paper, plastic, soda cans, ect. that we can. Today we went shopping for black friday and ended up with tons of paper and plastic bags, shoe boxes, and tissue paper and we recycled every bit that we could. Even after making these small changes on a daily basis, I still feel like I could do more to help lower the carbon footprint. Any ideas??

There is also a company called “myrorna” which means the ants. They collect old clothes you don’t want anymore and donates them to people who needs them more.

We reuse the plastic bags we get at stores as garbage bags in our garbage cans. Also, we reuse paper bags to collect bottles, paper, plastic, just about anything, really. When they get full, we take them to vrious staions for recyclning. In Sweden we have a system that’s called “pant”. In every grocery store you can find, you can hand in your empty bottles and cans and get a small amount of money for each bottle or can. only we and Finland use this system, even though all country’s in the world should use it. It should certainly come in handy in country’s with alot of poverty.