- Compost kitchen scraps and yard waste.
- Leave grass clippings on the lawn. They retain moisture, nourish the grass, kill weeds and discourage insects.
- Add coffee grounds and tea bags to your compost heap.
- Take your own shopping bag to the grocery store.
- Write school or business notes on the back of scrap paper.
- Choose cloth diapers over the disposable type.
- Support an environmental group, not only financially, but offer your skills as well.
- Form an environmental club in your school or organization.
- Plant a tree & look after it. Trees clean the air.
- Draft letters and reports directly onto the computer; skip the paper step.
- Photocopy on both sides of the paper.
- Keep some scrap paper by your printer to print out draft copies.
- Buy goods in bulk when possible. This saves on packaging, reducing the use of paper and plastic.
- Reuse egg cartons and plastic bags at the market.
- Repair appliances rather than buy new ones.
- Dry cleaning fluids are toxic- buy washable clothes.
- Eat lots of fruits and vegetables; they are less often pre-packaged in the grocery store.
- Wrap gifts in newspaper, magazines (ads are great- very colourful) or old posters, they are not as expensive as wrapping paper.
- Use cloth napkins, not papers ones; it's cheaper and more elegant.
- Clean out your store room and have a yard sale or donate items to a community group sale.
- Use rags for clean-up, not paper towels.
- Recycle paper products including carton boxes.
- 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.)
- Reuse envelopes by putting labels over the old address.
- Reuse file folders by putting labels over the old labels.
- Keep a couple of bags in your car or purse for those unplanned purchases.
- Keep sweets and other wrappers on you until you can dispose of it properly.
- Save used wrapping paper and reuse.
- Buy rechargeable batteries.
- University and school students can sell or donate old textbooks to new students.
- Take a lunch box instead of bags.
- Donate unwanted clothes and household goods to charity.
- At the office, circulate memos instead of duplicating them.
- Buy sodas and liquids in glass refillable bottles.
- Use containers to store food in your fridge rather than saran wrap or aluminium foil.
- Reuse old thin cloth (pantyhose) in the bottom of flower pots for drainage.
- Avoid buying aerosol cans, they can't be reused or recycled.
- Share magazines with friends or donate them to hospital or doctor's office.
- Re-upholster an old sofa rather than buy a new one.
- Purchase reusable razors instead of disposals.
- Buy products in recyclable, or better yet, refillable containers.
- Never throw garbage into a drain; it can block the drain and eventually ends up polluting the sea.
- 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.
- Use reusable plastic containers when you go on picnics or road trips and bring your garbage home for composting.
- Eat an ice cream cone rather than an ice cream in a plastic cup.
- Patronize fast food restaurants that do not use disposable crockery and cutlery.
- When organizing a large function, rent tableware from a service rather than use paper plates.
- Keep Christmas cards sent to you, cut them up & use them for gift tags next year.
- 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.
- Start an organic kitchen garden & rely less on bought vegetables, which may be packaged.
Extracted from the Environmental Protection Agency Guyana Brochure.
Click here for Brochure
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