This week Patch offers a few ways to go green locally, with some tips to improve the environment, reduce your carbon footprint, recycle and more.
Buy local
Reduce your carbon footprint by buying locally. Not only does this contribute to the local economy, it also reduces emissions because foods haven’t been shipped long distances and there is less packaging waste. Local farms include Broad Brook Beef, which sells beef and other local products, Hastings Hill Farm in Suffield, which offers milk, cheese yogurt and locally raised beef. Smyth’s Trinity Farm, a dairy farm in Enfield offers fresh milk, including chocolate and coffee flavors, plain and fruit-flavored yogurt, butter, cream and eggs. They offer home delivery to some towns in the area, including Windsor Locks. The dairy store is at 4 Oliver Road, Enfield.
It’s easy to recycle
Both East Windsor and Windsor Locks have curbside recycling pick-up every other week, which makes it easy to recycle plastic, glass and paper products. For East Windsor residents, go to www.eastwindsorct.com and choose “Trash and Recycling Information for more information about what types of plastic are accepted. For more information about Windsor Locks, go to windsorlocksct.org, click on public works and then recycling. Both towns use single stream recycling, which means paper, plastic and glass are all picked up together.
For East Windsor residents, there is also an oversized item drop-off for metal and large items coming up on Saturday, Sept. 24 at the F&G Volume Reduction Station, 9 Shoham Road, East Windsor from 7:30-11:30 a.m.
Compost
You can start composting at home if you have a spot to compost and use the result rich soil in your garden. Windsor Locks offers a compost facility where you can bring compostable items, such as vegetable and fruit scraps, egg shells and yard clippings. Composting is good for gardens, and also saves energy and waste when used instead of garbage disposal. Windsor Locks residents need to contact the WPCA for a permit. The site also will be open in the fall for daily leaf drop off. The town of East Windsor offers leaf and yard waste pick up Nov. 28 through Dec. 2 on regular trash day. Yard waste must be bagged in biodegradable paper bags. If you are unable to participate, you can call Greencycle in Ellington at 860-871-7442.
Reduce waste in lunches
Try to reduce waste in lunches that you take to school or work by using a lunchbox or insulated lunch bag, and reusable plastic containers rather than paper and plastic bags. There are lots of different lunch containers out there now, whether you want to buy different size containers or a compartment lunch container. You also can use cloth napkins and heavy duty plastic flatware that can be washed and reused.
Use online resources to reduce paper waste
Pay your bills online and choose e-mail alerts rather than snail mail to reduce the amount of paper waste coming into your household. Keep up with the news online at sites such as Patch.com and the Huffington Post. If you have an e-reader you can get digital copies of magazines rather than print versions.
