http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/reusable-bag-clean.html

Tip: In this season of consumer celebration most people tend to go overboard waste more then regularly.

Here is one aspect of this celebration where we can save a little waste:

• From the people of Earth911.com: TreeCycling

And a few various tree recycling sources:

• http://www.recycleyourchristmastree.com/
• http://searchchicago.suntimes.com/homes/news/1354745,HOF-News-arbor02.article
• http://dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/xmastrees/index2008.cfm

Tip: For some time we have had a very small temporary compost bin made from an old 10 gallon trash can. As you can image this filled up within a very short period of time. Outside being small it also did not really provide a good environment to compost, so I found myself scouring sites looking at compost tumblers mainly because a compost pile would not work in our yard.

After seeing many types ranging from $150 to upwards opf $300 I decided to look for “diy compost tumbler” and “diy compost bin” and came across allot of posts of people making composters from cheap materials and two specific site caught my attention: http://www.instructables.com/id/Compost-Tumbler/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn_5HRgiftg. One is a composter made from an old barrel the other how to make a rain barrel from an old cheap trash can.

So I decided to combine them and create a compost tumbler from a cheap $13 trash can, some pvc piping and a wood frame to hold the compost tumbler. I’ll post the pictures of the result on Twitter.

It works great for our needs and it only costs about $30 to make. Also I found this site later on of someone doing the same thing only without a frame. He just mixes the compost by rolling the trash can over the yard.

So if you would like to start composting, I suggest you google things like “diy compost tumbler” and “diy compost bin” or checkout any of the links above and start your own compost project. Happy composting.

Tip: Buy a large bag or two that you can reuse. In our case for example, we have a bag that, when loaded, almost fills the entire shopping. We got the bag at Ikea for under $1. You fold it up and throw it in your shopping cart, do your shopping and while checking out you pack the stuf into the reusable bag instead of plastic or paper. Outside the savings in plastic or paper it also has a great time-saving advantage since you now have fewer bags to pack in and out of your car. Make sure to get sturdy large bag you like and feels comfortable to you.

Also you may want to opt for a cooler. If you have any perishable items like dairy and meat products and you don’t want lying around in a warm car, you can also keep a reusable cooler in the back of your car. It can be a real fancy one or just one of those cheap ones you can pick up at Walgreens. They keep cool for a very long time and you can use them for years. This way you can also do some errands on your way back from shopping and you don’t have to race like hell drive fast to get home to keep your groceries in a preferred state.

Calculate your personal impact
Example: Let’s say you shop every week and have an average of 5 plastic bags every time. Using this scenario you have just saved 260 plastic bags (5 bags per visit times the 52 weeks of a year, 5 x 52 ). Did you know it takes 20 years for a plastic bag to decompose? This way you will save the planet at least 5200 years of trying to decompose the one-time plastics you used for only about 30 minutes.