1. Paper or Plastic? Cloth. Take your own cloth bags to the grocery store. Americans alone use around 65 billion plastic bags every year. Whole Foods recently quit providing the option of plastic, likely because people were choosing it just so they could recycle with the bags.
   Added Bonus! Now you can pick up a few large blue tubs and keep your recycling in those. It’s better for the environment and a lot easier to toss your recyclables into the tubs than to try and squeeze them into the bags.
2. Use Your Legs! If you’re like the average urban American, 41% of your local trips are 2 miles or less. Almost 9 out of 10 of these trips are still taken by car. You can easily walk a mile in 20 minutes, or 2 miles by bike in about 10.
   Added Bonus! You can burn 85 calories in 10 minutes with even light effort cycling, or 45 calories walking for 20 minutes.
3. Draught, please. When you order a beer, get it on tap rather than in a bottle. Glass is the least desirable of all recyclables, often costing quite a bit of money to recycle rather than making the recycling centers any profit. So drink often and make sure it’s in a glass.
   Added bonus! Draught beers are usually cheaper than bottles, and they have 4 more ounces as well.

• Glass, plastic and metal containers
• Magazines and catalogs
• Junk mail and phonebooks

For a complete listing, have a look at their official webpage for residential buildings.

Also, if you live in Shadyside or any neighborhood that gets their garbage collected Wednesday morning, feel free to subscribe to this Google Calendar I’ve set up. You can even set a reminder for yourself, so that you’ll get a text message or email the night before.