Quick and Easy Earth Day Tips

Happy Earth Day!

Today is a great day to think about what you can do to help your environment, not just today, but every day.

Everybody's heard the mantra of "reduce, reuse, recycle," but Sarah Haines, a professor of biological sciences at Towson University, said it's become so oft-repeated that some people don't follow it quite as much as they should.

"That's all you need to know, pretty much. It's all about reducing consumption. That's the main issue right now, especially in overdeveloped countries," she said. "We're taking resources to make our goods and to provide our services and a lot of the time we're using things when we don't really need to."

Some of the mistakes Haines sees often are well-intentioned. Yes, you don't have to use water to wash that paper plate, but that plate came from a tree, was made into paper, packed in plastic and shipped to a store and will soon take up space in a landfill.

Instead, Haines suggests bringing reusable utensils with you to work and limiting the amount of disposable products you use at home.

"I tell my students at Towson all the time to think about how much they're using," she said.

Haines practices what she preaches—her family of four only produces about a bag and a half of actual trash every week. The rest is either reused, recycled or composted.

Here are a few other quick tips. Share yours in the comments.

-If it's feasible for you, consider mass transit. A day pass for the Maryland Transit Administration's buses and trains runs $3.50. That's less than a gallon of gas. Depending on your commute and parking expenses, it might make sense to try it a day or two a week. The No. 8 line serves the York Road corridor.

-Consider composting your yard waste. Though the county still picks up yard waste one day a week to be taken for composting, grass clippings, if you leave them on your yard after mowing, act as a natural fertilizer.

-It's easier than ever to recycle, noted Clyde Trombetti, a spokesman for the Baltimore County Bureau of Solid Waste Management. In 2010, encouraged apartment complex owners to install single stream dumpsters. The county resource recovery center on Warren Road in Cockeysville accepts not just paper, plastic, glass and cans, but also electronics, large appliances, oil and fluorescent light bulbs. "You can take a lot more things to those centers than you can put out at home," Trombetti said.

-Turn the lights out when you leave a room, and either unplug devices or use a power strip switch to keep devices from drawing excess electricity.

Baltimore County has lists of tips and myths on its website (scroll down to "Fact Sheets").