Green Your Summer: Spring Cleaning
By Amanda Cunningham on May 16, 2014 from Green Your Summer via Connect-Bridgeport.com
Editor's Note: Connect-Bridgeport welcomes blogger Amanda Marks Cunningham, a 2005 Bridgeport High School graduate and public affairs coordinator for Waste Management in Bridgeport. This spring and summer, Amanda will be bringing readers eco-friendly lifestyle tips for greening their summer. Her debut blog entitled "Spring Cleaning" is below. Cunningham's blog series will be running every other week and will hereafter be posted on Thursdays. Look for her next blog "Green Vacation Tips" on Thurs., May 22.
Springtime is here and for many people, this often means spring cleaning. This year, give your house a thorough spring cleaning by using healthy methods for you, your family and the environment. Here are a few tips:
- Open the windows. The best way to get air circulating throughout your house is to let the fresh air in and the stale air out.
- Avoid the use of traditional air fresheners. An open box of baking soda, dried flowers, and cedar blocks are all natural fragrances that can freshen up the air of a room.
- Instead of using chemically-based cleaners, choose vinegar. Vinegar is a very effective cleaner and can be used to clean just about anything and everything. Use it to clean a kitchen floor or wash windows.
- When disposing of any dangerous chemical products, don’t pour them down the drain, into the ground, or in the trash. Read the labels or check with your waste management provider for options.
- Donate reusable old cabinets, doors, plumbing fixtures, and hardware to a local charity or building materials reuse center.
- Try to use durable items such as mops and reusable rags or sponges.
- Properly check and clean your home appliances to help ensure they run at peak efficiency. Remove lint and dust from your refrigerator coils and freezer. Clean up lint around your dryer, furnace, and any vents leading to or from them.
- Clean out your closets and collect old clothes and toys for donation or for a garage sale.
- Replace old insulation with insulation made from recycled paper, glass, and other recovered materials.
- Check caulking around windows and doors and do touch ups to conserve energy and natural resources.
Waste Management, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. It is also one of the largest residential recycler and a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States. The company’s customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America. To learn more information about Waste Management, visit www.wm.com.
