Sam Champion's Just One Thing

Nov. 6, 2008

"Good Morning America's" Sam Champion shares with viewers "just one thing" they can do to adopt a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.

Nov. 7, 2008
You can reduce the amount of trash you produce and save your pocketbook at the same time by reusing and recycling common household items. Check the tips below.

Mattresses

One household item that takes up so much space in landfills and is illegal to trash in some areas is your mattress.

Since they take up so much landfill space, some municipalities require you to recycle them. Even if it's not required, please recycle because Americans throw away about 20 million mattresses each year, and donating or recycling means smaller landfills.

Recyclers can separate the fiber, foam, steel and wood for remanufacturing, including making new mattresses. To recycle your mattress, check with the store where you're buying your new mattress to see if it offers donation or recycling services for your old one.

Also, you can go to Earth 911 and type in mattress and your zip code to find a nearby recycling drop-spot.

You also can use Craigslist and freecycle.org to list your mattress for free and chances are someone will want it.

Please clean your mattress before donating it or if you buy a used mattress, make sure you clean it. Also put a zipped plastic mattress cover over a used mattress to protect from bedbugs.

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Click here to learn how to clean your mattress before donating it.

Carpet

Just about every home has carpet. In fact, the amount of carpet sent to landfills each year could cover an area bigger than New York City.

Most carpet is made from petroleum, which is a nonrenewable resource. So, you should think about re-using carpet.

Some non-profit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity accept relatively clean carpet for reuse. You also can reuse carpet at home for floor mats and runners, cat scratching posts, and to even stifle weeds in your garden instead of pesticides.

Check out Earth 911 and enter "carpet" and your zip to find a nearby recycler.

Technotrash

Technotrash is a relatively new type of waste, which consists of old computers and computer-related materials printers including CDs, hard drives, zip disks, floppy disks, obsolete cell phones, rechargeable batteries, empty printer cartridges and all the cables, cords, chips and boards.

The items are difficult to recycle and more than 90 percent of technotrash is not beng recycled. Many don't know how to properly dispose of it.

There are two very important reasons to recycle your technotrash. First, recycling keeps your electronic waste, some of which contains hazardous material, out of landfills. Secondly, recycling your technotrash with GreenDisk is for privacy protection.

For more information, check out www.idealbite.com

Oct. 22, 2008

Keeping your water warm this winter can cost a lot of green, whether it's money or the environment.

A regular tank-type water heater burns gas all day, every day so that you can have hot water whenever you need it. That requires a lot of energy, especially because the tanks are large and carry about 50 gallons of water that needs to be heated.

A tankless water heater, on the other hand, only burns gas when you are actually using hot water. When you aren't, the tank shuts down, so it's not wasting any energy. Tankless water heaters are already in 95 percent of homes in Europe and Asia.