Go Greener Tips

Why Go Green – Living with all the rubbish and green recycling

Once a week the green waste disposal truck drives up to your cottage and lets the foul-smelling garbage disappear in his belly. Did you ever think about, where your rubbish is driven and what happens to it?

rubbish disposal becomes more problematical from year to year – and extra pricey.

These huge garbage amounts must be decontaminated in several way. The trash trash dumps are full, up to the edge, which overloads combustion planning. Dumps, suitable for poisonous trash disposal and processing preparations are missing.

And so originated a fairly new, rather dubious subdivision of industry: the hreen garbage tourism. In road containers and foul-smelling ship bellies lands our mud, in specific the hazardous trash hardly to be removed, against foreign currency in poorer countries, mainly in the Third World.

In the meantime, there are waste dumps with highly toxic waste everywhere on earth and even previously on the sea bottom.

That’s why the “Dual System Germany” (DSD) was introduced in on the 1st December, 1991. Since then the “ green point “ smiles at us on most packaging. He lets many consumers believe, they act for the advantage of the environment if they buy products with this marking, besides, even if it states just that the required packaging of these consumables should be returned and be recycled.

Experts have calculated that thereby the piles of trash can be relieved yearly with about seven to eight million metric tons of packaging material.

The reasonable solution would be to produce other meaningful packaging.

It is quite strange: On the plastic bottle one finds, for example, no „ green point “, although it is going back to the refiller, up to 40 times again and produces therefore by far less waste and claims, higher than all less raw resources and energy than one aluminium tin with the ” green point “.

Any type of recycling takes a load of the environment and the purse of the customers.

Over this come the trade the originating costs – also count as addition the certified advertisements for the ” green point “ or that the customers have to pay per packaging, up to 30 cents more. And whether really everything can be recycled is not sure generally yet.

The pleased winners are the packaging manufacturers, optimistically producing as much as before.

Nearly 30 percent of our household waste consist of packaging of all kind.
Most packaging materials are senseless, environmental-damaging and expensive.

Therefore, we may pay for it three times.

1. with the purchase at the supermarket,
2. when we pay our rubbish disposal fees
3. with our tax money with which garbage combustion preparations, rubbish transports are financed.

with the combustion of every single metric ton of trash originate in addition circa 4,000 to 5,000 cubic metres of toxic exhaust gases which are blown other or less in the air and are spread out to the surrounding fields, meadows and forests.

Better than any combustion or green recycling is avoiding of trash.

II. You can avoid garbage already at the purchase

A little packaging IS required – for hygienic reasons and for the security of the contents.

Nevertheless, mostly the packaging serves only for the reason of the advertisement or to draw the concentration of the customer to the product and to force him to buy additional.

From the goods of the equal kind You should always decide on that which are packed in an easy way.

And use for shopping a carrier bag, a basket or a net.

You should buy vegetables and fruit of the season, freshly, as a substitute of ready packs

Drinks and milk products you should buy instead of in tins, plastic bottles or throwaway bottles only in refundable plastic bottles. They can be refilled up to 40 times. For the production of a refundable plastic bottle about 0.17 kWh of energy is spent, but during the production of the non-refundable bottle almost the tenfold, namely 1.65 kWh are needed.

You burden the environment if you buy drinks in tin cans. The fabrication of a tin can from a tin plate claims about 2 kWh, of an aluminium tin even 3.6 kWh. Always remember: Green Recycling is good, refundable plastic bottles are better!!

Leave all food in tin cans on the store shelve. Totally apart from material consumption and energy consumption in the production, they are the most pricey kind of the packaging.
The price lies now and again higher than the contents of the packaging. In addition, fresh food contains much further vitamins, is healthier and tastes better.

Prefer afterfilling packs, e.g., with spices or salt.

Leave single use products, like ballpoint pen or lighters on the shelve, reach to refillable products.

Don’t buy in plastic packaging whatsoever there is also in glass containers.

Your Friend Erwin Heid, a German freelance architect, building biologist and advocate for Why Go Green. He like to learn you how You can save hundreds of dollars per month, help to save the planet and secure the future of our children.

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