Eco-friendly is not just about recycling and riding a bike. It is also about identifying a problem and drawing practical solutions. Being eco-friendly doesn’t just mean shower 5 minutes a day rather then fifteen, it is about conveying a message of doing what you can.

Across our nation, landfills are piling up. Open fields are being turned into dump sites. That is definitely a problem. With up to 80% of our trash being recyclable we all have the opportunity to draw solutions to solve this problem. Instead of trashing these things, lets use them to improve our yards. Here are some solutions that I have seen or heard about that will help this problem.

Take empty water bottles, milk jugs or coffee cups. You can easily modify them with a pair of sharp scissors or leave them as is. I have used milk jugs as bird feeders and used coffee cups as planting pots. Grab a paper cup and fill it full of dirt, add a seed or two and then apply plenty of sunlight and water. Take a milk jug and cut a large hole in the side opposite of the handle side. Tie a rope from the tree to the hand. Fill it full of sunflowers and pine nuts and you have a genuine bird feeder. There are many other usages of cups, bottles and miscellaneous “trash” I encourage you to think small and see what you can do.

All of the above are small things but what about all the large object that you have lying in storage, in your basement or in the gutter. Do not bring them to the trash but rather use them to make your yard look nice.

An old tub, fridge or old tires all have usages. Depending on the size of the tub you can get many usages out of it. If it was a deep tub or fridge, I would use it as mulch pile. I would use old chicken wire to cover it from animals and toss discard food in it. I would use it as a fertilizer. If the tub was not deep, I would use it as a planting bed. Like the cup, fill it with dirt soil and add rows or plants.

You can also use miscellaneous trash to help protect small trees and tall plants. Take a tire for an example. You can throw them around small trees and fill the base in with soil and fertilizer. Another suggestion I can would be to take random post such as metal rods, fence post or old brooms and mops and use them as a brace. This will protect weak plants from wind and weather. It would be like a crutch. 

Almost everything you are throwing out can have some use. There is an old “One mans trash is another mans treasure” That maybe true but I like to think of it as “One mans trash can help make an eco-friendly landscape.”