Reducing waste

This is easy. The City of Boulder subsidizes curbside recycling of many products, using commercial garbage disposal services. They collect paper (newspaper, office paper, cardboard, paperboard) and containers (glass, metal, paperboard). Other items:

We compost yard waste (deciduous leaves and grass) and some kitchen scraps.
Branch deadfall goes into the wood pile which feeds our (dual-burn) wood-burning fireplace insert in the winter. (This fireplace also reduces chimney emissions.)
Plastic newspaper wrappers go in containers in our neighborhood park for use as "doggie waste" disposal bags.
Some of the waste from my occasional remodeling projects go to a second-hand plumbing store [though this is going out of business :(], an aluminum/copper/brass recycler [I get paid!], or a non-profit building materials recycler in town. Sometimes, even they don't want this material (such as my old single-pane windows). So far, I'm one-for-one in giving this stuff away on Craig's List.

We usually take 1 (paper) grocery bag of trash to the curb each week, which is good because our [private] hauler (Western Disposal) charges more for increased quantities of trash.

We also are now using canvas bags for grocery shopping trips, though we end up getting a few paper bags (reused as trash can liners) for a week's worth of groceries.