Easy Ways to Recycle

When you think of recycling do you sigh and think that you just don't have the time or energy to do it? Do you see visions of hundreds of thousands of empty plastic bottles in some far-away factory getting ready to be melted down? Do you think that recycling is something that has to be hard; otherwise if it's not hard, then it doesn't count? I'm embarrassed to say that at one time, these were the thoughts that ran through my head and they justified my reasons for not recycling. I'm here to tell you that I was mistaken; recycling isn't something difficult, or something you have to go out of your way to participate in and when it's easy, well, it's just easy; and it still counts toward recycling.

Here are some of the easy ways I have found to recycle:

I have a terrible habit of leaving lights on when I leave a room. I seem to be someone who, when doing any kind of work, whether it's writing or stripping wallpaper, I need a lot of light around to do it. The first two ways I found to conserve energy and count myself in as a "recycler" was to turn off lights as I left a room. Sounds easy, right? Well, that's because it is easy. The only thing I had to do was remind myself that I was no longer going to waste energy by leaving lights on in a room that no one was occupying.

Mind you, I've had 43 years of doing things the way I'd been doing them and the change didn't happen overnight, but it did happen. There hasn't been a doorway I've walked through in the past 6 months or so that I haven't given a quick inventory before passing through the threshold and thinking, "Did I leave any lights on?" The great thing is, the times that I have left a light on, I'm given the final opportunity to stop and turn around and turn off the lights before leaving the room for good. Is this a difficult change? Like I said, it didn't happen as soon as I thought about my part in the effort to recycle, but it is something I have allowed myself to consider on a daily basis.

The other way I have found to easily adhere to this recycling thing is that I changed my lightbulbs. Yup, that simple act of replacing a burned-out bulb with one of the new, energy saving kind has really been a big help. The newer bulbs use up to 75% less energy when lighting a room and they will last up to ten times longer, too. How can you beat that? And there wasn't any effort on my part; all I did was replace the bulb with the new and improved bulb and have made quite the impact on my electric bill.

The good news is this; there are easy ways to stay on track with recycling, and you don't have to look very far to find them.