Eco Partners, Inc.

All those campaign yard signs! One innovative community recycles them after the election.

All those yard signs! - Eco Partners, Inc. Yard signs are everywhere, promoting homes for sale, community yard sales, or school events. But their numbers increase exponentially during an election season. Unlike other community signs, these have no purpose beyond the campaigns. One innovative Florida community has initiated a Campaign Sign Re...

Collecting food scraps for composting? Keep the odors at bay!

Fresh Solutions for Food Scrap Odors - Eco Partners, Inc. Food scraps are an inevitable part of kitchen waste, and the odors they produce can be a nuisance. Whether the odors are in your kitchen containers or an outside organics collection bin, you can follow these effective strategies to minimize unpleasant smells. Image credit: Daisy-Daisy | iStock | Get...

Want to make a fun "trashy" instrument? Here's how!

Want to make a trashy musical instrument? - Eco Partners, Inc. As long as there has been trash, there have been people compelled to save it from the landfill and give it one more chance at being useful. Entire TV shows, books, websites, and blogs revolve around this very topic. Whether it is repainting a piece of furniture, salvaging parts of an old house, or g...

Your good recycling habits influence the neighbors!

Keeping up with the neighbors - Eco Partners, Inc. Heard the phrase, “keeping up with the Jones”? Maybe we want a new car like the neighbors, or better landscaping like the neighbors. Turns out we want to keep with the neighbors with our recycling habits, too! According to a presentation by Kristin Kinder, vice president of research and waste st...

Is wastefulness making us sick?

Total Garbage - Eco Partners, Inc. Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World by Edward Humes is an eye-opening examination of a pervasive problem that plagues modern society: waste. Humes vividly illustrates the destructive consequences of our pursuit of convenience and excess, from overflowing landfills to the deple...

Back to school? Check at home before you shop.

Back to school with what you have - Eco Partners, Inc. As the back-to-school season approaches, it’s time to gear up for another academic year. However, this doesn’t mean you’ll have to break the bank. With proper planning and smart choices, you can navigate back-to-school shopping while saving money and reducing waste. Image credit: Drazen Zigic ...

What to do with those plastic bags? Try these tips!

Eco-friendly Bag Solutions - Eco Partners, Inc. Plastic bags are a significant source of contamination in the recycling stream. When plastic bags are mixed with other recyclables, they get tangled in equipment in sorting facilities, causing frequent stops to remove them and sometimes damaging the equipment. Plus, they may NOT get recycled after r...

Cleaning out the junk room? Think donation before disposal.

Donation over disposal - Eco Partners, Inc. In a world where consumerism often reigns supreme, the question of what to do with our possessions when they’re no longer used arises frequently. The knee-jerk reaction for many is to toss them away, relegating them to the fate of a landfill. However, a more conscientious approach lies in donating...

It's time to celebrate and not just the Fourth--it's Plastic Free July!

Ready to reduce your single-use plastics? - Eco Partners, Inc. Most of us thought of fireworks and picnics as we turned the calendar this week, but July is not just for celebrating the Fourth. It is also the start of Plastic Free July! For the past 13 years, the Plastic Free Foundation has promoted a global focus on reducing single-use plastics. The challenge f...

Just where do our donations go? Think global!

The global garage sale - Eco Partners, Inc. “Growing affluence across the developing world means that more and more consumers are opting for new stuff,” writes Adam Minter in his book Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale (Bloomsbury USA, 320 pages). A diverse, multi-billion-dollar industry is associated with reusing things th...

Take time to thank your waste and recycling workers this week!

Hats off to our waste and recycling workers! - Eco Partners, Inc. Each year during June, there is a national celebration of our Waste and Recycling Workers, the men and women who keep our local neighborhoods safe and clean. These essential workers are hardworking people who often fly below the radar, quietly and efficiently doing their jobs so that we all can li...

What leads to writing a book on sustainable living? Find out in our Q&A with Christine Liu.

Q&A with the Author: Meet Christine Liu - Eco Partners, Inc. Ever wonder what it takes to write a book encouraging a “green” lifestyle? Read on! Last week, we reviewed Christine Liu’s book, Sustainable Home: Practical Projects, Tips and Advice for Maintaining a More Eco-Friendly Household (White Lion Publishing, 160 pages). This week, we share our inter...

Ready to "walk the walk" into sustainable living? Here's help!

Walking the walk! - Eco Partners, Inc. In her book, Sustainable Home: Practical Projects, Tips and Advice for Maintaining a More Eco-Friendly Household (White Lion Publishing, 160 pages), Christine Liu invites the reader to join her on her rewarding yet “complex journey of continuous learning, investigation, and problem solving.” A c...

Collaboration is key to navigating solid waste issues.

Navigating the Plastic Predicament - Eco Partners, Inc. Today, global plastic consumption mirrors the upward trajectory of worldwide GDP growth. As a result, the crisis of plastic waste is not just a concern, it’s an urgent call to action. Annually, a staggering 460 million tons of plastics flood the market, resulting in approximately 360 million tons ...

Get ready for a green summer as you celebrate its kickoff this Memorial Day weekend!

Celebrate Summer the Green Way! - Eco Partners, Inc. While not technically the start of summer, Memorial Day weekend is its official kickoff! Summer is the time to fire up our barbeques, put on sunscreen, and get out the picnic supplies. Just be sure to stay green while enjoying time with friends and family. It’s easy when you follow a few sustainab...

Old electronics? Try to revive them before replacing them.

Reviving Gadgets - Eco Partners, Inc. Electronics recycling is the process of collecting, dismantling, and reusing or refurbishing electronic devices. It is an essential practice today, where electronic waste has become a significant environmental concern. Electronic devices contain various hazardous materials, such as lead, mercury, an...

There's more to conferences than the sessions--there are connections!

Connections and Peer-to-Peer Learning - Eco Partners, Inc. Eco Partners’ writing and production assistant, James Washington (pictured at left below), attended SWANA’s SOAR 2024: Technical Solutions for Resource Management conference in Phoenix earlier this month. James shares his reflections on the benefits of attending the conference and of peer-to-pee...

Show the Earth some love this week!

Celebrating 54 Years of Earth Day - Eco Partners, Inc. This week, we celebrated our 54th Earth Day. On April 22, 1970, millions of Americans came together to protest the damage happening to our Earth and initiated conversations about finding a better way. That protest was the first Earth Day. As celebrate Earth Day this year, the original focuses of 197...

Celebrate today and every day! Here's how: https://www.ecopartnersinc.com/every-day-is-earth-day/

Get ready for Earth Day on April 22! Be up on the theme for 2024.

Planet vs. Plastics: Earth Day 2024 - Eco Partners, Inc. The Earthday.org theme for this year is “Planet vs. Plastic,” with a goal to reduce plastic production by 60% by 2040. In its theme video, Earthday.org shares its concerns about the growing presence of plastics in our environment and encourages us to take the following three actions. Earth Day A...

Safe handling for your household cleaners before they are disposed of as HHW

Stay Safe with Household Cleaners - Eco Partners, Inc. We frequently encourage safe handling of household hazardous waste, which is typically about properly disposing of products you no longer use. However, handling these chemicals responsibly while you are still using them is equally important. You likely pull out cleaners every week for regular househ...

Ready to minimize your home?

Love Living With Less - Eco Partners, Inc. Would you like to spend less time deciding what to wear, less time looking for the things you need, and less money buying THINGS in the first place? Would you like to have more time and money to achieve your goals and pursue your dreams? With his book, The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to [....

Let's leave behind the old take-make-use-dispose-waste. Here's the EPA's strategy for a circular economy.

Strategic Steps Toward a Circular Economy - Eco Partners, Inc. The National Recycling Strategy: Part One of a Series on Building a Circular Economy, is the initial installment in a series from the Environmental Protection Agency. It is dedicated to cultivating a circular economy (as opposed to the grey “Linear Economy” pictured at left) and zeroes in on for...

Repair instead of replace - Eco Partners, Inc. When Bill Czappa was a boy, he honed his tinkering skills with his favorite toy: an erector set. Hardened steel rods and screw clamps allowed the construction of hinges and the transmission of mechanical power via rotating parts such as pulleys, gears, wheels, and levers. But what it really built wa...

Hiding hazardous? Find them, then dispose properly.

Are hazards hiding in your home? - Eco Partners, Inc. CAUTION! DANGER! POISON! These words are designed to keep people away, yet many everyday household products are labeled with these warnings and left on shelves or cabinets long after they are needed. Families in a typical home store about 100 pounds of unwanted hazardous chemicals. The unneeded — ...

Have a young one with questions about the environment? Here's the book for them (and you!)

Educating young environmentalists - Eco Partners, Inc. How does plastic get into the ocean? How is paper recycled? What happens to cans in the recycling bin? If you have little people in your life, then you know that children are forever asking how and why things are the way they are. You also know that an internet search does not always provide […]

Batteries need best practices for labeling and handling. The EPA will convene work sessions next month.

EPA and SWANA work on battery best practices - Eco Partners, Inc. Beginning next month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host a series of virtual working sessions to address best practices for battery labeling, collection, and recycling. Interested parties can participate by completing this form for more information. “The final product of these wor...

We all have them. Reuse and then recycle.

Boxes, boxes, boxes! - Eco Partners, Inc. It used to be that we saw an increase in boxes to our homes during the holidays, but now, buying items online and having them delivered to our homes is a year-round event. All those shipping boxes, packing materials, and padded envelopes can pile up. According to Forbes Magazine, the average America...

Reduce plastic bag use. Here's how.

Say "no thanks" to the plastic bag - Eco Partners, Inc. Plastic bags can be found almost everywhere. We see them in stores and restaurants, piling up in our homes, floating in creeks and rivers, and blowing around like tumbleweeds outdoors. Sadly, once the bags escape into nature, they stay there, breaking down into tiny pieces that harm wildlife and pol...

Collecting food scraps is easy. Just follow these tips.

Quick Tips for Food Scraps - Eco Partners, Inc. Collecting food scraps in the kitchen as you cook or clean up is simple. Just follow these few steps. For help with composting at home, check out Simple steps to backyard composting. Image credit: PIKSEL | iStock | Getty Images Plus