Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
NORFOLK – It seems we can’t live without cell phones, computers, televisions and other technology.
They let us stay connected, but they also quickly become obsolete, so they get thrown out and end up in landfills.
"People don't realize that the one monitor they have in their house could have up to five pounds of heavy metals, including leads. That could really harm their kids because you're turning around and if you put it in the landfill it is going right into the ground. And guess what? You're bathing in it. You're drinking it," explains Lisa Pizarro-Yob, COO of Creative Recycling Systems
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, as of 2007, almost 66 million desk-top computers are waiting to be thrown out. Add to that 42 million computer monitors, another 99 million televisions, plus portable computers and other office electronics like copiers, scanners and printers. The numbers are staggering.
Of all the outdated electronics, about 18 percent gets recycled. The rest, more than 3 billion pounds of it, eventually finds its way to landfills.
Creative Recycling Systems collects it all and then shreds and sorts the scraps, eventually converting it into usable materials. There’s nothing that can’t be recycled, even the glass.
"It will go through a glass processing system. It will be in another piece of glass down the line that you buy in your house and you don't even realize. Obviously, there are other materials in there and there is "precious." When I say "precious" I mean you have circuit boards. Circuit boards are going to contain a certain amount of gold, silver, and palladium.
All that can be reclaimed and basically recycled, Pizarro-Yob notes.
There’s an e-cycling event on October 11 at Grand Furniture stores in Hampton Roads where you can take your old electronics. Doing so gets rid of clutter in your home and in landfills.
