18. Recycling Simplified

One of the wonderful side benefits of simplifying your life is how easy the process of recycling becomes. By simplifying your eating habits (#57), you’ll greatly reduce the packaging that automatically comes with processed foods. By making water your drink of choice (#60), you’ll greatly reduce the number of cans, bottles, and plastic containers you have to dispose of. By eliminating the daily newspaper (#28), cutting back on your magazine subscriptions (#27), and stopping your junk mail (#26), you’ll greatly reduce the amount of paper you have to recycle.

You’ll also cut back on bottles and packaging by throwing out everything but the aspirin, and by reducing your use of prescription and over the counter remedies that don’t work (#66). Rethinking your buying habits (#40) and your need for goods and services (#42), and bowing out of the holidays (#33) will reduce not only the packaging, but also the number of items that clutter up your life. And of course, uncluttering (#1), staying uncluttered (#89), and gift-giving simplified (#35) are automatic recycling processes in themselves.

Experts agree that for all its promises, recycling is only a part of the world’s waste disposal problem. Reducing waste in the first place, which simplifying will do, will be a major part of the solution.