50 Ways to Reduce your Waste

1.  Compost kitchen scraps and yard waste.
2. Leave grass clippings on the lawn. They retain moisture, nourish the grass, kill weeds and discourage insects.
3. Add coffee grounds and tea bags to your compost heap.
4. Take your own shopping bag to the grocery store.
5. Write school or business notes on the back of scrap paper.
6. Choose cloth diapers over the disposable type.
7. Support an environmental group, not only financially, but offer your skills as well.
8. Form an environmental club in your school or organization.
9. Plant a tree & look after it. Trees clean the air. 
10. Draft letters and reports directly onto the computer; skip the paper step. 
11. Photocopy on both sides of the paper.
12. Keep some scrap paper by your printer to print out draft copies.
13. Buy goods in bulk when possible. This saves on packaging, reducing the use of paper and plastic. 
14. Reuse egg cartons and plastic bags at the market.
15. Repair appliances rather than buy new ones.
16. Dry cleaning fluids are toxic- buy washable clothes.
17. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables; they are less often pre-packaged in the grocery store.
18. Wrap gifts in newspaper, magazines (ads are great- very colourful) or old posters, they are not as expensive as wrapping paper.
19. Use cloth napkins, not papers ones; it's cheaper and more elegant.
20. Clean out your store room and have a yard sale or donate items to a community group sale.
21. Use rags for clean-up, not paper towels.
22. Recycle paper products including carton boxes.
23. Ask your gas station what they do with used motor oil. (If they throw it in a gully as many do, know that one litre of oil will contaminate up to two million litres of water.)
24. Reuse envelopes by putting labels over the old address.
25. Reuse file folders by putting labels over the old labels.
26. Keep a couple of bags in your car or purse for those unplanned purchases.
27. Keep sweets and other wrappers on you until you can dispose of it properly.
28. Save used wrapping paper and reuse.
29. Buy rechargeable batteries.
30. University and school students can sell or donate old textbooks to new students.
31. Take a lunch box instead of bags.
32. Donate unwanted clothes and household goods to charity.
33. At the office, circulate memos instead of duplicating them.
34. Buy sodas and liquids in glass refillable bottles.
35. Use containers to store food in your fridge rather than saran wrap or aluminium foil.
36. Reuse old thin cloth (pantyhose) in the bottom of flower pots for drainage. 
37. Avoid buying aerosol cans, they can't be reused or recycled.
38. Share magazines with friends or donate them to hospital or doctor's office.
39. Re-upholster an old sofa rather than buy a new one.
40. Purchase reusable razors instead of disposals.
41. Buy products in recyclable, or better yet, refillable containers.
42. Never throw garbage into a drain; it can block the drain and eventually ends up polluting the sea.
43. Get your children to make Christmas cards out of box boards and colourful magazine pictures. It reduces waste and gives a much more personal touch to your season's greetings.
44. Use reusable plastic containers when you go on picnics or road trips and bring your garbage home for composting. 
45. Eat an ice cream cone rather than an ice cream in a plastic cup.
46. Patronize fast food restaurants that do not use disposable crockery and cutlery. 
47. When organizing a large function, rent tableware from a service rather than use paper plates.
48. Keep Christmas cards sent to you, cut them up & use them for gift tags next year.
49. Be vocal. Say you don't want a Styrofoam container. Even if the restaurant has no alternative at the moment, if enough people ask they will seek alternatives.
50. Start an organic kitchen garden & rely less on bought vegetables, which may be packaged.

Extracted from the Environmental Protection Agency Guyana Brochure.

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