Have you ever heard of 'precycling'?  It's way better for the environment than recycling.

Precycling is the practice of avoiding waste in the first place by making choices such as buying in bulk, choosing products with minimal packaging, using and reusing your own containers and avoiding throwaway items (such as paper cups, foam plates and plastic cutlery).  How much precycling you can do is limited only by your imagination and how far you're willing to go to protect our environment. 

Recycling is better than trashing, but it is still an energy-intensive activity, because recycled materials need to be transported and reprocessed.  Precycling is simply about thinking a few steps upstream, and making more eco-friendly choices.  You could argue it's a fancy name for Reducing, the most important of the three Rs!

In the news

What will they do next?  The imaginative folks at Google are set to roll out new free software that will help people track their home energy use in real time so that they can find areas for improved efficiency. 

Interested in solar home design?  You’ll want to see the new Canadian Solar Home Design Manual, with up-to-date content, graphics, photographs and case studies.  More info is here.