Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
Austin officially kicked off its new single-stream recycling program Monday.
Some customers already have the large, 90-gallon carts that will replace the smaller bins. The city will pick them up every other week.
"It’s big. It's real big. It's huge," said Chappy Hulsey, recycler.
Chappy Hulsey already recycles a lot, and has been waiting f0r the new 60-gallon trash bins being delivered to Pay-as-you-Throw customers in Austin.
"I think it's great. If they'll handle and do it all," Hulsey said. "I don't know how they'll divide it up and handle it that way, but I think it'll be good."
There will be no need to sort recyclables like plastic and paper.
And how to do it is a frequent question -- so the city offered a demonstration Monday morning. Everything to be recycled is put into the cart -- no separation is needed. Trucks then dump everything together. Machines later sort the items.
"No more sorting; no more baling up your cardboard. Everything just goes in one so it's kind of an all-in-one recycling program," said Jennifer Herber, Solid Waste Services.
The city can now accept plastic containers -- numbered 1 through 7 -- and thin cardboard, like cereal boxes.
"It measurably helps improve urban air quality by having fewer big trucks on the road," Hulsey said.
Before Monday, the city's curbside recycling program only accepted a few plastic bottles and required customers to sort their recycling.
Now it's important to put your new recycle cart at least five away from your regular trash can when you set them out for pickup. That's to give the recycle trucks enough space to pick them up and turn them over. It's also important to remember they open toward the street.
Residents can pile all recyclables into their old blue bins until the new blue carts arrive. After that, you can put old bin at the curb. It too will be picked up and recycled.
