Common Sense Things We Can Do To Decrease America’s Reliance On Oil (and Save a Few Bucks) (Part 9 of 10)

The 3 R’s

We live in a disposable society. We buy new clothes when we haven’t worn out the old ones. We throw away extra food when we’ve eaten our fill. It’s a sad truth, but Americans are a wasteful people. I think we could all benefit from a few “Back in my day…” stories from grandparents who grew up in leaner times. Luckily, a simple set of rules for improving our wasteful habits is already laid out. Just incorporate the three R’s into your daily routine: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

Reduce. There are many ways to implement this rule into your daily life, but it starts with shopping smart. Purchase goods that use less packaging, especially plastic, because guess what, if it’s plastic it’s made from oil and it takes oil to get it to the store. For example, instead of buying pre-shredded cheese for your salad or tacos, buy a block of cheddar and grate it yourself. Cheese doesn’t go bad overnight, you save packaging material, and by buying in bulk, you save a little money at the same time. Another example, instead of buying bottled water, get a home filtration system. 60 million disposable plastic bottles per day are disposed of in the U.S. alone and millions of gallons of fuel are wasted transporting filtered tap water around the world. Not only is it wasteful, but it doesn’t make economical sense. Why pay two dollars a bottle for filtered water when America has some of the safest drinking water in the world and it comes out of the tap for fractions of a cent?

Reuse. The grocery industry shares responsibility with consumers for the wasteful “paper or plastic” question at the end of the checkout lane. We’ve gotten used to disposable bags, but grocers and consumers are seeing the light and jumping on the green bandwagon. There is a new niche market that sells reusable shopping bags; some are even 'fashionable'. Chain grocers like Safeway and Albertson’s sell their own reusable bags for a small price and sometimes offer them free during promotions. Safeway has an in-store recycling program where you can bring in used plastic grocery bags also. Less “paper or plastic?” means the store saves a little money, a few ounces of oil are saved for other purposes, and a few trees are saved from the mill.

Recycle. Everyone knows to separate paper from plastic and steel from aluminum, but there is a form of recycling that Nature practices everyday, composting. Composting removes kitchen, garden, and yard waste from the landfill and yields an organic rich material. All you need is a little space dedicated to it. You can actively compost, passively compost, compost with worms, use bins, or just pile the refuse in the corner of your yard. Any way you do it, the end result greens up your garden, your lawn, and the earth.