Food, drink, toys, apparel, pet products, sports equipment, school supplies, household items — practically everything that can be bought, not to mention the shopping bags the objects come in, add to the waste from consumerism. Have you ever looked at your purchases? They come in all sorts of plastic, paper, cardboard and aluminum, trying to advertise to you, the consumer, that you get more bang for your buck with the flashy, colorful and ultimately more packaged product. What, you may ask, ultimately happens to all this packaging? There are also the products themselves. Once a person has finished with their can of Coke, pair of old sneakers or broken toy car, where do they go?

There is a single answer to both questions: waste. All the wrapping materials and used or broken products go into huge landfills, creating an underground grid of piles of trash buried in the earth. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website (www.epa.gov), Americans created 251 million tons of trash in 2006. That’s a hell of a lot of trash. And that’s just America — there are 6 other continents out there, 5 of which have good-sized populations.

You may think, so what? All that trash is deep down under a gigantic mound of dirt, it’s out of sight, and there are still plenty of new items for everyone. Think again. Every time we humans extract from the earth’s natural resources (oil, all sorts of metals like copper, aluminum, tin, etc) to make these products, we are taking out a portion of those materials that can’t be replenished. For instance, once we use all of the earth’s oil, it’s gone — man will have to find a substitute to replace gasoline, plastics, and the whole multitude of products that use oil. This applies to the rest of the earth’s natural resources as well. And as far as the landfills go, the earth is only so big. Sooner or later, there will be no more space to store trash underneath the surface, which could lead to a scene similar to the one seen in the movie “Wall-E”, where trash is literally everywhere.

To sum it up, the prospects look pretty grim unless something changes in the way we, the consumers, make and use products. Lucky for us, there are small-scale actions we can take that could result in big-scale changes. Many people are already taking these actions. Here are the ways they are helping, and ultimately what you can do to reduce waste from consumerism:

• Recycle. This is perhaps the most obvious way to help — when you recycle your soda can, scrap paper or plastic container, the material is broken down and re-used, meaning that much more of the earth’s resources are preserved. This not only applies to metal, paper and plastic, but also to clothing, shoes, toys and furniture. There are many places where you can donate your used items, such as the Salvation Army, Goodwill and homeless shelters, as well as other programs that send clothes and shoes to kids in third world countries.

• Re-usable items. You see them everywhere now, the thin cloth bags (a lot of them made out of recycled plastic fibers) used for shopping bags — these save paper and plastic bags and can be used over and over again. You can also purchase hard plastic or metal bottles to carry your water in — this saves a bunch of plastic bottles, which are in fact made out of a plastic that can’t be re-used for more plastic bottles. Also, cloth towels make a great substitute for paper ones and will save many a tree.

• Composting. Added to the landfills is often an inordinate amount of food. Composting is a way to reduce that amount — it breaks down food particles into soil that can be used again. Also, being conscious of taking only what you can eat reduces overall food waste.

• Awareness of wasteful products. When you’re in a store, try and find the lesser-packaged product. This encourages companies to use less packaging and saves extra waste from being put into landfills. You should also avoid Styrofoam — though it makes for a good, disposable coffee cup, it also makes for a stagnant, permanent piece of trash, as Styrofoam is not recyclable or biodegradable.

• Buying higher quality products. When you buy the cheap, chintzy version of anything, it’s what you describe it as — cheap. If you buy the better quality, perhaps more expensive item, it’s bound to last longer. With products that last longer, you will go through them slower, which saves waste.

• Crafts. People may look at you funny, judge you, think you’re gross, or, they may think you’re the absolute coolest person ever when you tell them that the bracelet on your wrist is made out of trash. There are many ways to be creative with used items, (one of which is using old chip bags to make gum-wrapper chain bracelets). These crafts not only help reduce waste, but they also look super sweet.

And that’s the way reducing waste from consumerism and ultimately helping the environment should be viewed, isn’t it? Super sweet, cool, awesome and trendy. Because it is not only the cool thing to do — it’s also the right thing to do.