Introducing: Simple home tips

I'm starting a new category of post here in the sustainability section. A lot of the work I do is theory and a some of the work I do imvolves things no one really wants to try out at home (see In apartment home composting). However, I find occasionally trying things out that really anyone can do. I want to start sharing these tips with people that are like-minded on the sustainability front. Here are a few to start:

• Make your own reusable "paper" towels. I discovered this handy trick when I was starting to investigate cheese making. Cheese cloth you buy in stores is way too flimsy to be used in cheese making. A great biology professor out there recommends plain white handkerchiefs or non-terry cloth towels. I made a nice stack of them in the kitchen and suddenly found myself using them for all sorts of things. Wiping up the counter, squeezing the excess water out of a shredded potato for hash browns, oiling the nice butchers block cutting board I have, dusting, and most recently, dampening and wrapping fresh chives in for refrigerator storage. Anything cotton, and preferably non-died works. Personally, I end up cutting up white t-shirts that I get as schwag at conferences, but I could see an old white sheet set working just fine, pillowcases, etc. Use once, rinse if needed, toss in laundry. I've almost stopped using paper towels altogether. (p.s. If you do use paper towels try composting them, most recycling programs can't recycle them further.)
• Never buy plastic bags. Ok, we all already always use reusable bags, and have a few stashed on us all the time for impulse buys, right? RIGHT?!? But you sort of can't avoid landing with plastic grocery sacks in one way or another. if you order delivery for lunch, or a particularly dense clerk insists on giving you one (I've had a bagger bag groceries in plastic, before putting them in my reusable bags before, for real). I use them for garbage bags. On particularly good weeks I can take a few in from the office because I run short. I've always thought it was the biggest absurdity that we need to buy something for the specific purpose of throwing it out. Check with your municipality if they have regulations on this, but I find that most garbage guys are just as fine dumping a can with 2-3 small bags tied up in them as they are dumping a can with one large one. I find that if I am staying on top of the recycling, composting, and reusing, then nothing in my garbage is particularly perishable. In fact, it's mostly packaging. I go through about 1 grocery sack every 2 weeks (single dude, not a family). Of course, if you wind up with excess bags, you should find another use or recycle them.
• Dispose of compact florescent bulbs properly! Compact flourescents, in general, are a Good Thing ™ However, what a lot of people don't know is that they contain mercury. Not a lot, but "not a lot" x "everyone" is a lot. Now, for all the people about to cry "mercury is evil", I, in general, agree. However, much of the U.S. is still on coal power, and in that case, more nasties are released into the atmosphere for the electricity to power the old incandescents than is in a CFL bulb. Don't trust me, trust Popular Mechanics
  

  Approximately 0.0234 mg of mercury—plus carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—releases into the air per 1 kwh of electricity that a coal-fired power plant generates. Over the 7500-hour average range of one CFL, then, a plant will emit 13.16 mg of mercury to sustain a 75-watt incandescent bulb but only 3.51 mg of mercury to sustain a 20-watt CFL (the lightning equivalent of a 75-watt traditional bulb). Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.

  Most places that sell them take them back, or should know where you can take them back, if not a quick google search or call to your department of sanitation should do the trick.

I'll leave it at that for now. As I think of more things I'll add them to posts like this.