Here are some of the most interesting and practical alternative uses for coffee filters please feel free to suggest other uses in the comments below!
- Clean windows and mirrors. Coffee filters are lint-free so they don't leave behind any residue.
- Save a bottle of wine. Broke the cork? No problem. Just place a filter over a pitcher and carefully pour the wine into it.
- Line flower pots. Place a filter at the bottom of the pot to prevent soil from leaking out of the drainage hole.
- Protect china and non-stick cookware. Place a coffee filter between dishes or pans when storing or packing.
- Wipe off smudges. In a pinch, you can use to clean eyeglasses, camera lenses, televisions, and computer monitors.
- Keep your microwave clean. Prevent splatters by covering dishes or bowls in the microwave with coffee filters. Using another plate is your best bet, but filters are a good alternative to plastic wrap. And you can easily reuse them a few times.
- Make a bouquet garni. Tie up bay leaves, parsley, or other herbs in a coffee filter. Drop it in your stew or soup pot, and easily remove it when you're done cooking. Recipes often suggest cheesecloth for this process, but a coffee filter is an easy-to-find alternative.
- Diffuse the flash on your camera. Place a coffee filter over your flash to soften the brightness. You can also try putting coffee filters over lights or lamps to lessen the harshness of direct light when taking indoor photos.
- Make sachets. Tie lavender or other dried flowers and herbs in a coffee filter to make great-smelling bundles you can store in drawers and closets.
- Use for sewing projects. Coffee filters make a great backing for embroidering or appliqueing soft fabrics.
- Make tea bags. Wrap loose tea in a filter and tie with a string.
- Use for storage. Wrap Christmas ornaments and other rarely used fragile items before packing away. By Lori Bongiorno Read More from The Conscious Consumer blog
Manufacturers know that flashy packaging translates into increased sales, but Much of this packaging is unnecessary. There’s a ton of material we continue to schlep home when shopping — the cellophane, unrecyclable bags, plastic, and cardboard used in the packaging of many common items. A fantastic, and such an easy eco-friendly action for most of us to take is to carrying our own reusable shopping bags to the grocery store when we goes to shop
As consumers, there are a number of items we can use or purchase in order to reduce our consumption of excess packaging here are 15 Ways to Reduce Food Packaging:
- Bring a travel mug whenever you go to your favorite coffee shop. Many cafes will fill your mug at no additional charge, eliminating the need for those one-use styrofoam cups with plastic lids.
- Use a reusable, stainless steel drinking bottle instead of individual drink boxes or bottles.
- Buy fresh fruits and vegetables instead of produce in cans, frozen boxes and bags.
- Buy in bulk, using your own containers from home to eliminate the use of can, carton, and plastic bag packaging.
- 5. Use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.
- Buy big boxes of cereal instead of individually packaged cereals.
- Never buy individual “snack-sized” boxes or bags.
- When washing non-bagged greens, use a salad spinner. That way you won’t have to use paper towels to blot the greens dry.
- Buy quarts of yogurt instead of eight-ounce or smaller cups.
- Use cloth or a gold coffee filter rather than paper filters.
- Buy bulk cheese instead of individually wrapped slices.
- Make your own popsicles using reusable molds, rather than buying boxed popsicles. Be sure to use BPA-free molds.
- Use metal and ceramic baking pans instead of aluminum disposable pans.
- Use loose tea instead of one-use tea bags.
- DIY, green cleaning products instead of commercial cleaning products. Care2 is a great resource for recipes for these easy to prepare recipes, from window cleaner to furniture polish.
Waste management is the most tiresome practice for many city dwellers. In their busy schedule they find it really difficult to dispose the household garbages in a hygienic way. Here are some tips that aid you to dispose the household waste more effectively.
Compost: Garden waste and house scraps can be composted at home. This compost will give you a nutrient rich soil.
Water Bottles: It is always better to have a water filter at home. If you are getting water from the shops, try to get it in jars than in plastic bottles. This will help you to save more place from reserved slots for empty plastic bottles.
Kitchen Spills: You can use cotton cloths instead of disposable kitchen roll. In a way this is also an alternative way to reuse your old cotton cloths.
Refill: It is always advisable to buy detergents, liquids, salt, etc. in sturdy packets. This will save you from disposing empty packets and will keep the things in a neat array. During the next purchase you have to just refill the container. If you can get the detergents and other non edible accessories in a large scale, you may not have to worry about their disposition.
Batteries: After the lifespan of your battery finish out, you may find it difficult to find a suitable disposable method for it. It is always better buy a charger and rechargeable batteries as they are much cheaper. They will also help you not to scatter the finished batteries.
Carrier Bag: The carrier bags that you bring home after each shopping will accumulate in time to make an indisposed waste. To avoid this dilemma, it is better to carry a permanent carrier bag every time you set out for shopping. These can be reused time and time again.
Old Clothes: You need not have to dispose your old clothes at a single shot. They can be shredded or rewoven. If they are still not in good condition to wear outside, you can donate them to charity shops.
Waste Papers: Even if you are out of your college, you may find a large pile of papers scattering in your house. The best way to dispose them is sale. There are many vendors who take away the waste papers to recycle. You have to just sort out the papers and sell them at a regular interval.
Waste management can be effective only when you understand the idea 'Abandon the undesired'. Be careful to throw away the right waste at the right time, which will get you ample space and time at house.
Recycling rubbish could do more harm than good to the environment, a new research has revealed. RMIT environmental engineering expert Tim Grant was quoted by news.com.au as saying that when it came to recycling consumer electronics such mobile phones, computers and TVs, "the net (benefit) of recycling them was negative (for the environment), but throwing them away is equally damaging.
While most experts agree that recycling plastic bottles and glass jars does less damage than burning or putting them in a landfill, the recycling process has environmental costs. David Moy from the Waste Management Association of Australia used the example of rinsing out a glass jar before placing it in a recycling bin.
"The approach I would take to that is to not use fresh water to rinse out, but put them on the sink and wash them at the end of your washing up. "That gives you a clean product, without adding (that) environmental cost. But there’s also an environment cost with transport: using carbon fuels and building the vehicles."
Dr Sami Kara, an expert on the total environmental impact of consumer products at the University of New South Wales, said the recycling process has many unknowns, and that "it is almost impossible to answer" questions without going into the subject in detail.
"These are issues related to type of product, collection networks, distance, volumes, recycling techniques, land fill cost, etc. "They all play a critical role," he said.
bio fuel, cars, computers, recycling, electronics, chemicals.
Can you imagine a car being propelled by a fuel created from parts of discarded computers? Well, a team of Romanian and Turk researchers believes that it may just be possible someday.
And the force behind their belief comes from a recycling technique they have developed to convert parts of discarded computer circuit boards into environmentally friendly raw materials for use in consumer products.
Cornelia Vasile at the Romanian Academy at Iasi and her colleagues wanted to devise a way to remove toxic materials from waste electronic scrap so that such material could be safely recycled. They collected printed circuit boards from discarded computers, and employed a special combination of catalysts, high temperatures and chemical filtration to destroy flame-retardant additives in the plastics.
The process enabled the research team to remove almost all the toxic substances from the scraps, and generated oils that could be safely used as fuel or raw materials called feedstocks for a wide range of consumer products.
"It is good work. The recycling of scrap printed circuit boards is becoming increasingly important because some of the metals they contain are becoming increasingly scarce," Live Science quoted chemical engineer William Hall at Coventry University in England, who did not participate in this study, as saying.
He said that the novel method would have to demonstrate its advantages over the current recycling process of smelting if it was to succeed commercially. According to him, the benefit of this new technique "is that as well as recovering the metal content of the printed circuit boards, you can also recover the valuable organic chemicals."
"The biggest obstacle to development of this technology is the scaling-up of the process," he added. A research article detailing this work will be published in the May 21 issue of the journal Energy & Fuels. It will cut the length of the road trip from Shanghai to Ningbo, a busy port, by 120 km.
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