Helping out the environment can be easy as 1, 2, and 3, and it is by following the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Reduce is listed first, and this is because of all the 3 Rs, this one has the most impact -- reducing our consumption of products and the waste that we produce will help decrease the amount of items we throw away to the landfill. Reuse follows next because whatever we cannot reduce, we can try to give it a second life by reusing them again. For whatever we cannot reruse again, we recycle them so they can be made into new things. Finally, if we simply cannot recycle them, the last alternative is to send them to the landfill.
In Toronto, there is a website that helps residents with exactly all this. The city's Solid Waste Management website provides information and news about its collection services. There is also an online tool, Waste Wizard where you can search for items to see how you can properly dispose of them. This includes information about items that are safe and can be picked up at the curbside or apartment (such as recyclables, organics, and garbage), as well as items that are hazardous or cannot be picked up, and need to be dropped off at specific depots located within the city for disposal. To help with reuse, the Solid Waste Management website provides a list of some charities that accepts donated items.
Helping out the environment doesn't always mean to do one huge thing in order to make an impact. But if everyone can do small things consistently, like following the 3 Rs, the combined efforts of all our actions do make an impact.
