One of the easiest and cheapest ways to augment your energy independence is through recognizing the value of the resources you have at your disposal, even those that appear to be trash. By changing how you view energy and resources, you will be better equipped to make responsible decisions that directly impact your home, community, and local economy.
Numerous municipal and state recycling programs make it easy to reduce your wastes, which help reduce raw materials costs for the products you use every day. Since it takes so much energy to refine and produce initial materials such as paper, glass, and plastic, recycling helps to cut energy costs down immensely. Every time that you recycle, you are helping to make those materials more affordable, since in a sense the base material has already been created. Utilizing recycled material allows minimal energy and materials to go into creating new products, the savings of which are passed on to you, the consumer. Also, reducing the amount of garbage that enters a landfill demonstrates a commitment to the environment and the future spaces of our children.
It is very likely that your community has a recycling program, which may provide drop-off locations if you do not have specified recycling receptacle pick-up from your house. Some materials may seem recyclable, but in fact are not so. For example, plastic bags can be recycled separately, but contaminate the processing of materials recycling at waste management facilities since the plastic often gets caught in the machines.
Be conscious of the materials you recycle, and if applicable, sort them for the sake of convenience. It is actually worse to mix non-recyclable items in with recyclables than to not recycle anything at all.