Due in part to the irresponsibility of consumers, landfills are now reaching new heights. Families are sending items to the landfills that could have easily been repurposed or recycled by a simple toss into the little blue bin. If you would like to differentiate yourself from the mass of irresponsible consumers, you can. You can do your part in eliminating the amount of waste produced each year, or even work towards the ultimate goal of eliminating the need of landfills altogether.

Innovative Recycling Ideas

Instead of mindlessly dumping items into the recycling bin, why not make an effort to reuse some of the things you would be eliminating?  Do you have some bottle caps lying around the house? Make a bottle cap necklace by following this step by step tutorial. If you have a love for sewing, why not make a patchwork handbag instead of throwing away all of your unusable clothing. These ideas are just touching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to innovative recycling ideas, below is a list of tutorials that will help you reuse a few of your everyday items.

Tutorials to Reuse Everyday Items

Glass Jar Picture Frames - Turn your spare glass jars into modern day picture frames.

Mini Mosaic Tray - Turn your drab tray into a funky serving tray.

Pin Cushion - http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/2008/09/pin-cushion.html

Baby Dress - Make a dress for your baby girl using daddy's old sweaters.


General Tips

The motto for living a greener life is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. If you are making the transition from irresponsible consumer to living a green lifestyle, live by those words. Making small changes in your daily life can mean giving the environment a much needed break. A tip to reduce the amount of waste you produce is to buy higher quality garbage bags. Yes, you will have to spend a bit more money but purchasing garbage bags of higher quality means having to use less bags overall. You can fit more garbage into a high quality garbage bag because of their durability. It may not seem to be a worthy investment, but it is. Let's say your usual output of garbage bags (with a low end brand) is six per week; when you switch to a higher quality brand, your weekly output reduces to three garbage bags. Over the course of a year you will have saved 156 bags of garbage.

There are some things that simply can not be recycled; disposable diapers and disposable feminine pads fall into this category. If you think that there is no way out of using the aforementioned products, think again. An eco-friendly (and wallet friendly) alternative to disposable diapers and feminine pads are cloth diapers and pads. Cloth diapers and cloth pads are reusable and will last years before having to be replaced. Would you rather discard of these items three times per day or once every three years? Both are fairly inexpensive and can greatly diminish the amount of waste that is sent to landfills everyday.

Please feel free to print out any of these resources at home. Before you do, please be sure to stock up on high quality remanufactured inkjet and toner cartridges.

This was written by Printerinks.com, your home for printer inks and laser toner.