My contribution:  stop bringing trash home with each and every visit to thre grocery store!  Buy things with less packaging, or in packaging that can be easily recycled--less trash IN means less trash OUT.

My methods:  using a laundry basket for groceries (even at warehouse stores--eliminates the cardboard boxes), allowing me to carry more into the house at one time, selecting bulk foods, eating mostly raw produce, and using a fireplace for any and all paper stuff (it makes great kindling!).  When the shopping's done, the laundry basket goes back into laundry duty.

As for the stuff that does go out, glass gets washed and crushed at the bottom of a metal trash can, aluminum (mostly jar lids--no sodas here) and other cans get washed and separated,  paper and thin cardboard go into bags for the fireplace and BBQ pit, and food goes into the compost pile, leaving me only plastic (in the form of thin plastic produce bags, and thin wrapping) and styrofoam (from meat packages)--the styrofoam WAS going to a local daycare center for crafts, but it went out of business.  When kindergarten starts up again at the school across the street from me, I'll send my foam there instead.

Egg and berry cartons go back to the health food store where I got them--farmers cut down costs by re-using them.  When we could still drink milk, we'd get it in glass bottles, again returnable to the farmer through the health food store.

Any metal and glass ready for the bi-weekly pickup gets put in a nearby neighbor's recycling container, because I live in an apartment with no  recycling facilities--besides, I find I'm pulling more OUT of these dumpsters than putting in (this place is a gold mine for dumpster-diving, especially the second week of the month, known as "Eviction Week").

The amount of money to be made from our trash is the reason why it costs to go to the dump--our cities KNOW EXACTLY what a goldmine they have out there, and  seek to protect it from can collectors, dumpster divers, metal scroungers, and wood seekers...that should tell you something.  Something free is considered worthless to the provider, but something for a fee has attached value to it.

Now that my family is somewhat settled in IN we're recycling.  We started the 2nd week we were out here.  I check every single cotton-pickin' thing before making the decision about throwing away.  What used to be my trashcan in VA is now my recycling bin and a much smaller trashcan takes trash/food scraps.  I'm hoping to get a compost barrel for food scraps.  I've been telling DD how we're going to save her fruit cups from lunches to start our seedlings for next year's garden and how that's a form of recycling called "reusing".  She thinks it's very cool.

We're allowed to burn here, but right now we don't have gobs of paper, so mostly we've only burned dried out tree branches after trimming them.  I've been really diligent about taking my reusable bags to the grocery store so we only have enough plastic bags for the trashcan in the bathroom that we scoop kitty litter into (so maybe a month's supply). 

I'm really proud of us as a family because we've gone from 3 or 4 really stuffed bags of garbage down to 3 barely 1/2 full bags of garbage -- getting emptied only b/c the smell will get bad if we don't take it out!  LOL  It does make me wish that trash disposal was measured differently; sure it's only $4 a week, but my neighbors put out 2 huge bins and I put out 1 small bin and we pay the same weekly price.