Recycling bins
Paper tigers
Small changes in your lifestyle are all that is needed to save the planet. How do you begin? Let us offer a few friendly suggestions for the user and the environment that you should try at home. This time: Turn the line “Do not uproot what you have planted” into a way of life
“Paper is a product that will always be in demand, and it is only good for the day that you are using it,” declared a family who run a printing press, in a festive interview to the Israeli printing portal. “They said that the Internet would reduce the need for paper, but demand has only risen. More people read on the Internet and then print it out on paper”, they explain why their family business is not slated to close in the near future.
The truth? They are right. The Ministry of Environmental Protection reports that paper and cardboard make up a quarter of the total weight of garbage produce in Israel and 29 percent of its volume, and that a million tons of paper is consumed in Israel a year. Only 200,000 tons of paper and cardboard, only a fifth of all garbage, are recycled. And we have not even mentioned the pollution produced during the paper whitening process-using chemicals containing chlorine, which releases the fatal poison, dioxin, into the air.
The printing family’s forecast is, therefore, correct. Even during the electronic age, we use a tremendous amount of paper, and along the way destroy thousands of acres of forests. The desire to read, which is usually mentioned in a positive way, only brings the end closer for more and more trees. Every thirty seconds a book is published somewhere in the world, and in the past fifty years the amount of books produced has risen to 250,000 million a year. Therefore the most ecological paper is not recycled paper- it is not paper at all, it is your personal computer.
So, what can you do?
- Try to avoid sending letters and send emails instead.
- Instead of printing documents - read them on your computer screen.
- If you are already using a printer, use both sides of a page and recycle pages that have already been printed
- Ask all your service providers, the electric company, phone company, local councils, credit card companies, Internet service provider, etc., to send your bills via email and not through the mail
- Drink your office coffee in a glass or ceramic cup instead of a disposable paper cup.
- Exchange disposable paper towels, even those made of absorbable material that can be used a few times, with rags and cloth towels.
- Proud parents of children - in nature stores and on specialty Internet sites you can buy multi-use ecological diapers. They are made from organic cotton and look exactly like disposable diapers - but they do not contain chlorine used for whitening, can be washed, and are much friendlier to the baby.
- If we are already talking about waste, collect your dog’s waste in old newspapers
- The most stringent will even avoid wrapping presents in colorful paper.
- If you are already using paper products, only buy those made out of recycled paper that was not chemically whitened. Their production uses 70-90 percent less energy than the production of regular paper.
- Instead of buying new books - exchange books at your local library.
- Ask your local council to set up paper and cardboard recycling bins in your neighborhood and do not give up until it is done. Do not wait for someone else to do it, everybody has a personal responsibility for the garbage they create
- If there are no paper or cardboard recycling bins in your neighborhood, organize these bins at your office. You can find the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s procedures for paper collection here
- Until there are laws against flyers, local newspapers, leaflets, and the rest of the junk mail that arrives in your mailbox, put a sticker on your box asking to not receive this kind of mail
