My husband and I are not trashy people. Just sayin.’ We are always amazed by the amount of bagged trash some people have in the back of their vehicles when at the weigh station in my township. I realize more people in a household might mean more trash but with just the two of us at home, we make less than half a bag of garbage a week. We yard sale things, we compost, we don’t buy items with a lot of packaging and so on.

Years ago, I had learned about “precycling” on the radio. When discussing where our trash ends up with students, I started using this word with them.

What is precycling?

Precycling eliminates the need to recycle or dispose of trash by not creating trash in the first place. This is an action taken before any recycling has to be done at all. Hmmm, I did not know it had a name. It’s just what we have always done.

My parents and grandparents were doing this long before it became a “thing” to do. My Nana was green-minded, and she didn’t even know it.

Instead of plastic storage dishes she would use glass bowls and jars. When Tupperware was first introduced, I remember her saying that buying storage dishes would never catch on.

We all know that new products require resources to make. Some are worse than others, sure, but anything new you buy has been made and shipped halfway around the world to get to you. It’s reduce, reuse, recycle for a reason. First and foremost, use less stuff.

Water is everywhere

I will never understand the idea of buying bottled water. Did you know that one out of 10 bottles makes it into a recycling bin? And, despite what water bottling companies want us to believe, “tap” water is perfectly safe to drink whether it comes from a well or supplied by a water company.

While energy is used to make my reusable water bottle, the impact on the earth is far less than buying bottled water in a plastic bottle multiple times a day.

Franklin Klock, my coworker, asked me one day, “Did you know water has an expiration date?” I was dumbfounded. I laughed and said that our water on our planet is billions of years old, so I found that hard to believe. He took an empty water bottle out of the recycling bin and held it out for me to see the expiration date. He said once water is bottled, it must have an expiration date. Crazy, huh?

Helping Mother Earth

Everything I do has an impact on this planet … even something as simple as my morning coffee has an impact.

I try learning where my coffee is sourced from and choose those brands that don’t have a harsh effect on the planet. And I brew at home filling my travel mug every day rather than stopping for an iced-Ristretto, 10-shot, venti, half whole milk and half breve with no whipped cream with 5 pumps vanilla, 7 pumps caramel, 4 sweeteners, poured, not shaken order at the coffee shop in a disposable cup.

When my vehicle hit the 200,000 mark and had its 13th birthday, my husband said we should think of trading it in. We looked at all the new shiny cars and shook our heads. Replacing our aging vehicle with a shiny new one doesn’t come without environmental costs. A ton of materials are (literally) required to make a new car. We settled on a used car over the brand new because of features and gas mileage, but either way the resources had already been used to make all those cars on the lot.

Facts about cloth tote bags

I try to use my cloth tote bags every time I go to the store but sometimes, I forget them and end up with those horrid plastic bags. I kick myself for being too lazy to go back out for my totes, but the good news is there are places to recycle those onetime use bags. I have always tried to minimize my environmental footprint by using those totes, but I never once stopped to think about the impact of the tote bag itself.

Last year, the Administration of Environment and Food of Denmark compared shopping bags from the thin, flimsy polyethylene bags all the way up to the most “eco-friendly” organic cotton totes.

As it turns out, my cotton tote must be used 7,100 times to make up for the resources that went into it. Thank goodness my tote wasn’t made with organic cotton! It’s estimated that an organic cotton tote would need to be used 20,000 times. If an organic cotton bag were used twice a week for the rest of one’s life, it would be worth it after 192 years. Of course, I have already done the damage by using these bags, so the best thing I can do is keep using them.

Thinking about your food

Cows make a lot of waste, and that waste makes enormous amounts of methane, so we have cut our beef consumption by eating more venison, poultry and fish. I thought I would do the same thing when it comes to dairy products.

My decision was to start drinking almond milk because it would be a great way to go “green” by reducing our milk demands. It turns out that almond milk is not a great choice, either.

Although nuts do have a smaller carbon footprint than cow’s milk, they require a lot of water. It takes more than a gallon to grow one almond. It turns out that my better choices would be oat and soy milks, because they are better for the environment.

Going to the farmers’ markets is a better choice than the local supermarket — right? I thought by buying from a local farm I was reducing the number of miles that produce had to travel. But according to the economists, its superefficient to ship things like produce in larger shipments. The local farmer bringing a couple crates to the market might have a bigger carbon footprint per tomato.

I was excited when I noticed one of my favorite restaurants making the switch to compostable, biodegradable bowls, cups and utensils. I thought finally someone was thinking about all the waste created when eating out! Unfortunately, my excitement waned once I realized that even biodegradable stuff doesn’t decompose in a landfill. Landfills are places where decomposition cannot happen. That’s why landfills become “full.”

Jeannie Carl is a naturalist at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center in Summit Hill. The center rehabilitates injured animals and educates the public on a variety of wildlife found in the area. For information on the Carbon County Environmental Center, visit www.carboneec.org.