My family shops at the grocery store Whole Foods pretty often, and we always come home with tons of paper bags and lots of plastic containers (which are used to store the fresh foods, nuts, etc.). One way my family and I have decided to reuse and repurpose these containers is by putting our leftovers in them. They are the perfect size for a refrigerator and they are easy to clean. We reuse the sturdy paper bags for transporting miscellaneous things when needed.

If you would not like to reuse the plastic containers, you can always recycle them at your local participating Whole Foods: http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2009/01/gimme-5-recycling/

Every time we go to the grocery store we use plastic or paper bags to carry the food home. This is a waste of tons of paper and plastic and recycling can be expensive. To solve this problem we can bring our own reusable bags from home, but remembering to do this every time can be difficult. So instead we could also reuse the bags they give us for various purposes. In my family we reuse our plastic bags when we take our dog on a walk or to carry our lunch to school. Here’s a link with 20 creative ways to reuse your plastic and paper bags from the grocery store.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about not using the bags that the grocery store provides and that we should bring our own bags for carrying goods to the car, but what about the plastic bags that are already made? They can’t be recycled very well, and most of them end up in landfills after a one-time use. My family uses plastic bags as a way of carrying lunch, but the following link provides much more creative ways of reusing a plastic bag, including crocheting them into a rug! But whatever you decide to do, reusing plastic bags is a great way to help the environment.

When things break or get old we usually through them away. We through out so many things, and most if not all of them are recyclable in one way or another. For things such as clothes, games, or books there are places like Goodwill where we can donate them. For things that cannot be donated we can recycle. There are so many creative ways things can be recycled. Everything from tires to jeans can be recycled in a creative way. You can make a swing out of an old tire, or an old pair of jeans into a bag. There are so many ways we can recycle our old things, and below is a link to a website with many creative ways to recycle our old things.

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.

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.