Department of Environment & Conservation
Robert Martineau, Commissioner

Back to the TP3 Households front page.
What are the TP3 Levels and how can I progress?
How can I practice air pollution prevention and conservation?
How can I conserve energy in the home?
What is hazardous in the home and how can I reduce it?
How can I practice land and water conservation?

Buy permanent items rather than disposable. Buy products with less packaging. We often pay more for food packaging than we pay the farmer for growing that food. Buy only what you need. Americans throw away about 10% of the food they buy at a supermarket. This results in dumping the equivalent of 21 million shopping bags full of food into the landfill each year. Repair items as much as possible.

Use durable coffee mugs or cups rather than plastic or Styrofoam cups. Use cloth napkins or towels. Reuse boxes for storage or shipping. Purchase refillable pens and pencils.

Look for products made from recycled materials to encourage more use of recycled content. An estimated 4.2 lbs of solid waste is generated per person per day. A lot of this garbage can be recycled. One ton of recycled paper saves 4100 kilowatt hours of electricity, 17 trees, 6,953 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, and 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling one ton of aluminum saves 27 cubic yards of landfill space.

Using recycled beverage cans to produce new cans allows the aluminum can industry to make 20 times more cans for the same amount of energy. Recycling one ton of PET (a type of plastic) containers saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space. Although plastics account for only 7% of the waste stream by weight, they occupy 20% of the volume. Recycled plastics can be made into many things: bags, clothing, handles, baskets, and much more. Half of all polyester carpet made in the U.S. is made from recycled plastics.

Recycling one glass bottle saves enough electricity to light a 60-watt incandescent bulb for 4 hours (and for a CFL that can replace that incandescent bulb, it is enough electricity for 16 hours of light). Using recycled glass to make new glass cuts related air pollution by up to 20%. For every pound of steel that is recycled, enough energy is saved to light a 60-watt incandescent bulb for a day… 4 days if it’s a CFL to replace that 60-watt incandescent bulb. For more information check out: EPA eCycling; EPA What You Can Do in Your Home ; and the Tennessee Recycling Coalition.

Links for additional information:

America Recycles Day
BabyEarth Renew program
Cool People Care
EPA eCycling
EPA Recycling resources page
EPA What You Can Do in Your Home
The Homeowners Guide - The page contains several tabs with information on recycling, energy efficiency, and other resources as well as disaster preparedness.
Green Shopping for Tennessee booklet
Keep Knoxville Beautiful
Knoxville Recycling Coalition
OurEarth
PartSelect.com: Green Guide to Recycling Appliances (submitted by Gerry Carter)
TDEC Waste Tire program
Tennessee Recycling Coalition
TP3 Member success stories on Waste Reduction

If you have a source of information that you think would be helpful, please send us an email with a link to the information.

For more information about the Tennessee Pollution Prevention Partnership, please contact Curtis Hopper at 615-253-1729 or 1-800-734-3619 or by email at Pollution.prevention@tn.gov.