Friday, November 20, 2009

Recycling/Reusing is important!


The amount of rubbish we create is constantly increasing because increasing wealth means buying more products, Increasing population means more people on the planet to create waste. New packaging and technological products contain materials that are not biodegradable.


 
Yesterday my blogging brain waves were triggered by the container we keep the gum in. The trigger said, HEY do your blog on Recycling.
You KNOW what came Next! As I opened and shut drawers and cabinets, pulling things out and snapping away, my husband said ?What are you DOING?" and as I continued the hunt, I mumbled "blog on recycling".
Our gum, tea bags, cough drops reside in plastic containers that deli lunch meat comes in. I keep them and use them for, small left overs, beets and squash. Why buy expensive plastic containers when almost every thing we buy these days comes in some kind of container.

Our cabinets and garage are full of Plastic Coffee Cans, which contain Sugar, Grits, Flour, DVD's and CD's and in the garage, clothes pins, screws, JUNK,


Small things like paper clips fit in a recycled lunch meat box and fits in the drawer

My drawer organizers are business card boxes, I use the top and the bottom, sit them in the drawer and the bigs ones hold tape and larger items, the small ones hold really small items, one box does double duty. I also use cheese boxes because they are strong. I have one business card box that holds OTHER peoples business cards.




The dog cookie jar is a pickled beet jar and the Cool Aid containers....we drop our change in a recycle vase on top of the chest of drawers, and then store in the cool aid jars. You say you don't drink cool aid? neither do we, but we have friends that do. this started when my husband was wade fishing and asked Lynn for a couple of these jars to tie string on and hang on his belt to keep his flies and other fishing gear in, tied to his waist they float. She kept giving them to him and theywere so nice and cute, i started looking for other ways to use them.





44 pounds of dog food, fits nicely in three 5 gallon buckets that the pool chemicals come in. We use these bucketsfor planters in my husbands bucket garden. at this time we have 3 trees and 2 pineapples growing in buckets. we use them for mopping the floors, washing the cars, watering plants.


Our world is in danger of becoming completely buried under a sea of plastic. Give me your ideas for recycling.........maybe I may have missed something. If you don't recycle, consider it.

ALSO: think of all the MONEY I have saved reusing things I have already spent money on........

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wonderful post .... couldn't agree more. I try to live by the Reduce .... Reuse .... Recycle approach to life. Don't always succeed, but if everyone does a little that soon adds up. Reusing I find easy and love shopping second hand or in charity shops. Freecycle is good as well - do you have that? Recycling is getting easier as there are more facilities available for all sorts of packaging .... and the supermarkets in the UK are being put under pressure to use less packaging in the first place. Reducing consumption? Well the biggest challenge is to consider mending things instead of replacing them - when consumer goods are so cheap it's too easy not to make the effort and just get another item. And for those of us who love technology it can be hard not to desire the latest variant on something we already own. There's a (big) part of me who would love a new camera for Christmas .... but my old one works pretty well, surely I should get a few more years use out of it?

Thought-provoking post! Thank you :o)

Ginny Hartzler said...

This is a really good blog, with lots of good suggestions, so now people have no excuse. But now it's made me want to go to the grocery store and buy Kool Aid! And since we don't drink it, then I'd have to recycle the Kool Aid itself!

Betsy Banks Adams said...

Hi Sandra, We do recycle and do many of the things you have listed. I did write a blog about our plastics problems in our area. Read it if you have a chance. You can find it by looking on my sidebar at my labels. It's under "Recycle"....

We used to be able to turn in all of our plastics to our recycle place --and now they just take No.1 and 2 plastics. I hate that since so much of what we use is plastic --and I hate to throw it away (which I now have to do).

BUT--we do lots of other things in order to 'help' the earth.... It is just SO important.

Great post, Sandra. Thanks!!!
Hugs,
Betsy

Madeline said...

Great blog, with a lot of good suggestions for recycling. We moved to Liberty County 17 years ago and have been recycling ever since. A few of the things we recycle are newspaper, magazines, all colors of glass, all plastic that has the little doo-dad mark on the bottom that says it is recyclable, cardboard, tin cans and anything else that they have a bin for. We take our aluminum cans to church. The money the church gets from the cans goes for a scholarship for one boy and one girl when they graduate from high school to use for their college expenses. We dump our own garbage about twice a week. Recycling not only saves our planet for our children and grandchildren but is reduces the amount of garbage we have to dump. Chatham County is still not recycling. I just don't understand it. Common sense tells us that if we don't do something, our children will be overrun with garbage. We use containers like you do for "stuff." If I can find a use for it I save it and use it for one thing or another. As "Cambridge Lady" says, if everyone will do a little, it will add up and make this a better world for all.

Marie said...

This is a fantastic post Sandra! I agree with every word and you've given me a couple of great ideas. My son is pretty good about recycling, but it's more of the artist in him. He's likes to create and build things out of stuff most people would throw out.