Health & Fitness

10 Ways to Save the World with Your Trash this Earth Day

1 Cell phones Their circuit boards contain a toxic slew of cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic—heavy metals that leach into the groundwater and can cause cancer and birth defects. Last year, Americans discarded 140 million of the devices. Instead of contributing to this ecological nightmare, hook up with the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, a nonprofit that collects discarded phones in every state and either recycles or refurbishes them. call2recycle.org

2 Shoes As part of its Reuse-A-Shoe program, Nike will take your old funky-smelling sneakers and turn the rubber, foam, and fabric into three types of Nike Grind—a major ingredient in synthetic surfaces such as basketball courts, tennis courts, running tracks, and playgrounds. Niketown stores and Nike factory outlets will accept any brand of athletic shoes as long as they are not wet, are not cleats, and don’t contain metal. letmeplay.com/reuseashoe

3 Carpet More than 4 billion pounds of carpet enter our landfills every year. Science’s best guess as to how long it will take to decompose: 20,000 years. Carpet America Recovery Effort is a nationwide alliance that will connect you with a recycling center in your area. Your old carpet can be turned into new carpet, fiber padding, automotive parts, and a variety of other materials. carpetrecovery.org

4 Computers When our computers die, they are shipped to China, where workers are poisoned by lead and flame retardants when they tear apart the machines for scrap. Some of the lead is even fashioned into costume jewelry that is sold across China. A better method is to hold the manufacturers responsible for the recycling and safe disposal of their own creations. Dell and Sony now take back all of their products; Toshiba recycles its laptops; and Apple—if you buy one of its new computers—will properly dispose of any brand. You can even return your old iPod and get a 10 percent discount on a new one. www.computertakeback.com

5 Construction Materials More than a quarter of landfill waste comes from home construction and renovations. Take any salvageable materials—old doors or decking, a broken dishwasher—to one of Habitat for Humanity’s ReStores, where DIY-ers buy them at deep discounts. ReStores are now in 45 states, and some have reported raising enough cash to build an additional 10 homes a year. habitat.org

6 CDs and DVDs It’s unknown exactly how long CDs and DVDs will remain at the bottom of our landfills, but it is known that at many municipal dumps, the disks are incinerated and emit toxic fumes such as methane and monochlorobenzene. So instead of throwing them in the garbage, call GreenDisk, a company that will pick them up at your house and recycle them into car parts and office supplies. greendisk.com

7 Mail The United States Postal Service processes more than 8,000 pieces of mail per second. Last summer, to reduce the ensuing waste, USPS began providing free recyclable Tyvek envelopes for its priority and express-mail services. Return your stash of used envelopes directly to DuPont for reprocessing. Offices capable of collecting more than 500 envelopes a month can also create custom recycling programs. envelopes.tyvek.com