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Lifestyle & Travel

Items You Didn’t Know You Should Recycle

Phyllis Coley @phyllis_coley

If you have items lying around your home or office and simply taking up space, consider recycling, reusing, or reselling them to reduce waste.

As our society moves towards creating a more sustainable future, a question people across the planet are asking is, “How do I know what I can recycle?” There are some obvious responses, such as soda cans, newspapers, cardboard, and plastic bottles, but recycling is also about reusing materials or items instead of letting them go to waste in landfills. Each year, people dump many items they could salvage into trash cans. Here are just some of the items you didn’t know you should recycle.

Electronics

itemsIn today’s world, you would be hard-pressed to find any aspect of society that the advent of the Internet hasn’t affected. With the interconnectedness of everything due to the Internet of Things, old, broken, or obsolete electronics have started to clutter homes and offices, and many people will unfortunately just throw these into garbage bins. One example of this is old cell phones, which you can usually bring to your phone carrier for proper disposal. You can take other items, such as MP3 players, chargers, digital cameras, and televisions, to recycling centers; these items are also often accepted at recycling drives. If you’re computer-savvy, you might also be able to salvage parts from computers to save for repairs. Some retailers will even pay cash for old video games and systems.

Household Items

itemsYou can also reuse or recycle many items around the house after you’re finished using them. You can take old household appliances such as blenders, toasters, and microwaves to donation stations or simply resell them, and you can donate old clothes and shoes to shelters for those less fortunate. Take old sports equipment to one of several businesses that deal in secondhand items. If you don’t use reusable shopping bags, you can usually return the plastic ones you get at the supermarket to the collection bins that many stores have at the front. Some home improvement stores are willing to take old batteries, while other companies are willing to accept old light bulbs or printer ink cartridges. Finally, you can sometimes return prescription eyeglasses to an optometrists’ office to be recycled into new frames and lenses.

With the push to create a more eco-friendly world during the last few years, it’s important to learn about the items you didn’t know you should recycle so that those materials are available to future generations. That you get to free up extra space in your home or office while saving the planet is just the icing on the cake.