Easing Into Frugality Part Two: Recycling

Save $ Strategy: Recycling

This one obviously varies by geographic area, but recycling in many towns is free. That means if you pay someone haul off your garbage, the more items that you recycle the less you may pay for trash pickup. In my town, we purchase city garbage bags for trash pickup, but the recycling is picked up for free. The dump in our area also has a recycling center that allows you to discard one bag of kitchen trash for free when you bring recyclables. If we took advantage of this we wouldn’t have to pay for trash at all, but for us the dump is definitely out of our way.

I would say that before we began recycling we put out on average about 3 bags/week and since then we’ve reduced this to 1 bag/week. At $1.75 per bag this is a weekly savings of $3.50 per week or $182 per year.

The obvious green benefit is that we are diverting the recyclable materials from sitting in a pile at the town dump. In the process, we are also setting a good example for the kids who in turn will (hopefully) grow up to recycle themselves. My husband likes the fact that he doesn’t have to empty the kitchen garbage can as often because it isn’t getting filled up with cardboard and plastic bottles.

Getting Started

Many towns/cities have a website that outlines the recycling programs for that area. If not, a call to your city clerk can usually get you the information that you need. Some cities provide containers for collecting recyclables. Ours does not, so we use plastic office trash cans that we got for free.

At first we were a little overwhelmed by what was recyclable in our area and what wasn’t. We began by bundling up our newspapers, magazines and catalogs for a month and were surprised at how quickly it added up. Once we felt comfortable with that, we expanded our efforts and began recycling plastic and cardboard (think about all those boxed grocery items like cereal or macaroni and cheese). Finally, we added glass jars and tin cans. We lined the recycling containers up along the wall on our back porch so that all we have to do is step out the back door from the kitchen and toss the item into the appropriate container. If you don’t have such easy access to an outdoor area, you could put one or two small bins under a cabinet or out of the way.

I find that just keeping recycling in mind has made me rethink a lot of things that I used to do out of habit and I’ve started implementing small changes in our home as a result.

• Instead of buying individually packaged snacks, drinks and lunch treats, it’s both frugal and environmentally conscientious to buy the bigger sized snacks and repackage into smaller portions. We’ve cut down on the amount beverages that we buy in disposable plastic containers opting for reusable solutions.
• I switched from using paper napkins to cloth ones. I picked these up at a garage sale, but I plan to sew some using scrap fabric one of these days.
• I cut way down on the amount of paper towels used for basic kitchen clean-up. We now use dish towels for the majority of chores and I keep a bag of rags (made from cut up old t-shirts) handy for really gross clean-ups like the toilet and such.

I'd be interested to know what changes others have made that benefits both the planet and the budget.