Nonfiction Writing

Here are some ways my family tries to recycle and reuse items. I encourage people to try adapting these little habits because they make a bigger impact than you think. We had been very consistent with storing items and reusing them ever since I could remember. For example, we always store plastic bags in a little drawer after our trips to the grocery store. We also store piles of cardboard boxes in the basement (probably too many pieces). Because so many things pile up, we often joke around about how our house feels like a giant waste bin. Although it can be annoying to have so much stuff occupying random drawers or rooms of my house, I realized that I often reuse these items.  For example, I use plastic bags to carry items because it's convenient if I'm moving around a lot. I also use plastic bags to line my trashcan so that I can easily take it out whenever I need to. As for cardboard boxes, I use them to store items I don't necessarily need clustering my room. I also som...

In addition to old recycling habits, I started adopting new ones.  Instead of buying new, plastic flowering pots, my mom and I took a lot of random plastic containers we had been storing in our garage, and filled them with various plants.  I also started growing my avocado plants in old espresso cups instead of trying to buy new cups. Since we have around 13-15 plants in our house, if we had gotten 13 pieces of new plastic, imagine how much unnecessary plastic that would've been. I realized that although it's hard to avoid buying non biodegradable items, there are many ways to implement them into useful resources.  Another example that we recently adopted: my mom took old shirts and turned them into masks instead of buying unnecessary fabric. My dad took old milk cartons and turned into small "shovels" which proved to be pretty useful and sturdy when he worked with cement.  I thought these were very small and minimal efforts on our part but it was nice...

       One morning, I trudged into my aunt’s kitchen to make my breakfast. I had just gotten the last egg in the egg carton and finished the box of cereal. My aunt walked in right as I aimed to throw away those two boxes. To my surprise, she started scolding me in Korean about how precious these items were. I thought to myself, why were these dollar items valuable? I mean, what use could an empty cardboard and paperboard have? I later learned that these items were not literally "valuable", but they came with a cost; my aunt would have to pay a bigger price if she threw them into the trash.       Like my 12-year-old self, many people fail to realize the importance of recycling every necessary item. The media especially emphasizes the importance of recycling plastic. Of course, I’m not saying we need to stop recycling plastic! No – rather, I’m expressing the importance of considering other products as recyclable material. I learned a lot from my s...