Conserving Water and Energy With High-Efficiency Washing Machines

Being environmentally conscious comes in many forms from all angles. From reducing how much we use to reusing what we can and recycling what’s left. Conservation and preservation go hand-in-hand with these efforts.

Newer High-Efficiency (HE) washing machines conserve both water and energy, making them incredibly popular among environmentalists.

Do You Have Recycling Bias?

The term “Recycling Bias” refers to the propensity of people to throw larger or full sheets of paper into the recycling bin while bits and scraps of paper went into the trash.

The same was found to be true of crushed cans or plastic bottles. Empty but intact cans or bottles went into the recycling bin while their crushed or dented counterparts were destined for the landfill. 

Dealing With Yard Waste

Any homeowner can tell you that the upkeep and maintenance on a home never seems to be finished. Painting this, fixing that, and keeping up with the lawn and yard work.

The grass and weeds alone are enough to keep anyone busy each week with mowing and weed eating, but as the trees and bushes grow so quickly, they need seasonal attention, too.

Do Prescription Drugs Get Into Drinking Water?

Pure clean drinking water seems like it would be fairly easy to find in the United States. As plentiful as water is, and usually free of charge at that, sometimes it’s anything but pure and clean.

According to several studies, American drinking water can contain trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs, including 
antibiotics, hormones, mood stabilizers, and other drugs.

Can Chemicals and Solvents Be Dumped Down the Drain?

Wastewater treatment is a process to convert wastewater, which is water no longer needed or suitable for use in its most current state, into clean water for such things as drinking, cooking, and washing.

When this type of water is disposed of down a drain or flushed down a toilet, it either goes into a septic system or into a municipal sewer system where they pass through a wastewater treatment facility.

“If you have a septic system, wastewater from your house goes into a tank buried underground. The solids settle out and partially decompose. The remaining wastewater then goes into a drain field where the natural processes ongoing in the soil help to further break down the wastewater. Toxic materials in that wastewater can kill the helpful bacteria and the system will not operate properly.

Why Do Landfills Attract Seagulls?

If you were asked to sit in a lawn chair, close your eyes and simply listen to the beautiful call of the
seagulls around you, you would swear you were sitting by the ocean, or at the very least, Lake Michigan. Upon opening your eyes, you realize your surroundings are different. Much different.

In reality, there are at least twenty-eight different known species of gulls that are commonly referred to as seagulls. Some find them to be soothing and remind them of being at the beach. Others think of gulls as scavengers that are found in noisy flocks that congregate wherever food is available and consider them to be a nuisance.

Insects and Microorganisms in Landfills

The smell of trash left in a garbage can for a few days is an incredibly attractive smell....to a fly.
Why? They feed on decomposing trash and lay eggs so that they may feed on it, as well, during their developmental stages.

Landfills, then, are veritable havens for insects and microorganisms to feed and thrive. But do they help or hurt the ecosystem of a landfill? "The waste decomposition role of small soil insects is of high importance in the breakdown of solid organic materials. They consume large quantities of materials to compensate for poor food quality and produce relatively large amounts of wastes."