One of the easiest ways to reduce our consumption rate is simply to use less stuff. Buy less, use less. When you can’t use less, consider reusing what you have in a different way. In the design world, this would be called repurposing: reusing an item of value to serve a new, often completely different purpose.
Use these ideas for inspiration on how you can reduce your consumption rate and offer a new life to items you may have previously tossed out.
REDUCE and REUSE
- Stop buying bottles of water and buy a refillable water containers instead. We are so lucky St. Louis has great water! Filters on your tap or at your refridgerator help clear any impurities with reverse-osmosis systems offering even more filtration.
- For parents with children in diapers – consider reusable cloth diapers. LONG gone are the times when you need to fold, pin, and diaper-cover a squirmy toddler. St. Louis’s own Cotton Babies has a great website (http://www.cottonbabies.com) with friendly personnel to show you the latest innovations in cloth diapering.
- Choose to reuse with cloth hand towels and wash cloths instead of paper towels – plus, they feel better!
- Grocery stores have recently begun selling reusable grocery bags for around a dollar each. Use them everywhere you buy something! I took a Macy’s bag into Schnuck’s the other day. It held all of my groceries and I didn’t use a ‘new’ bag. Some stores like Whole Food and Target offer a discount for using reusable bags.
- If you don’t use reusable bags, reuse the plastic (or paper ones) you do get. Small plastic bags are great for small trashcan liners and brown paper bags make great wrapping material for shipping holiday gifts.
- Cook your own food or dine-in. Very few take-out containers are recycled, if they are even recyclable. Go to http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/community-news/reuseable-containers-47011022 for the dirt on the best (and worst) containers for our environment.
- When you do get take-out, use left-over containers (or empty margarine tubs) for bringing food to a potluck or when giving away cookies around the holidays.
- Donate your used toys and clothing to charity or to resell shops. You save it from a landfill and give it a second life as another child’s favorite toy – or another woman’s favorite sweater.
Think outside the box. If you go to throw something away and you think it can have another life, try it!
