Clean up your workplace!

Today is officially "Clean Up Your Workplace Day." Why, do you ask? If your workplace is like mine, and you don't own a business or work at home, you probably share a building with numerous people. Many of those people think that they have maids (especially if janitors are hired), and would leave their trash around to be picked up by someone else. This trash of course includes fast food wrappers, cans, plastic bottles, boxes from food, etc.

In an average work day, I can find at least five recyclable bottles or cans in the mess of trash just left in random places at my work. That equals 25 cans per week, assuming a 5 day work week, and 1300 cans per year, assuming 52 weeks per year.

If all these cans are recycled, it will keep approximately 40.7 pounds of aluminum out of the landfill and back into circulation. Since aluminum can be recycled indefinitely, it is useful to keep it out of the landfill. Uncrushed, 1300 cans would fill approximately 25 kitchen trash bags. Imagine throwing out 25 less bags of trash each year.

If your state has a 5 cent deposit, you can make an extra $65 a year by picking up after someone else. An extra $65 payment to any loan will reduce the total interest paid by much more than that. Or, given to someone else, you can make a positive difference in their lives.

Picking up trash has another benefit. It's nicer to look at a neat and orderly work place. As long as it's not distracting you from your actual work, your boss would probably also appreciate it. Picking up trash from the ground and other random places and putting it into recycle bins and trash cans (only if it can't be recycled) will keep rats and bugs from being attracted to your work place. Everyone likes to work in a place that doesn't smell like rotting food.

Of course, if you are one of the people who leaves your trash around everywhere, you can make a difference by picking up after yourself. Your coworkers are not your mom, wife, or maids. People will like you more if you're the one helping fix the problem, instead of the one causing it.