There’s no doubt about it — humans produce a lot of trash. In the United States alone, every single person produces, on average, 2,072 pounds of trash for a grand total of 254 million tons. Let’s break that down a little more — that’s close to five pounds per person every single day.

And all that trash has to go somewhere. Sadly, in spite of recycling efforts, less than a quarter of the trash we produce is recycled. The rest of it goes into landfills or is burned. And worst of all, quite a bit of it ends up in the oceans and other water sources. Well, more than “a bit”. There are more than 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. There’s no telling exactly how much garbage has ended up in our waterways.

You might think there’s nothing you can do, but that’s not true. While bigger laws need to be passed to reduce waste, there’s an excellent way for you to decrease the amount of trash produce personally. That means recycling and even better, upcycling. It starts small with things like, say, bottle caps. Here are 50 ways to begin.