What do YOU recycle?

Recycling is not a new concept. It's just one that got put aside in affluent, industrial countries.

The adage "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" is sometimes called a Vermont-ism, but neither of my parents (both born at the turn of the 20th century) were from Vermont and they both were very frugal. We recycled anything that was recycelable.
One of my children's most memorable Christmases was the year after my parents retired and we spent Christmas with them. My parents gave the children hand crafted items and wrapped them in the comic pages from newspapers being saved for other recycling projects or to be passed to another neighbor who didn't subscribe to the newspaper. To this day they may not be able to tell you what the presents were, but they remember thinking how perfectly fabulous it was to have them wrapped in "the funnies".

A few months ago my attention was drawn to hand bags made from newspapers in the Phillipines.


This reminded me of the small trash cans we used to decorate back in the 60's. We'd take colorful magazine pages, square them up, roll them corner to corner and glue them around a large juice can.

We also used to make paper beads by rolling a small square corner to corner, gluing the tip and painting with tempra paints. While surfing today, I found this site, also located in the Phillipines. They recycle paper to make "beans" then make jewelry from them.

Shopping bags made from plastic bags in Ghana




In the impoverished West African nation of Burkina Faso ingenious entrepreneurs have learned to recycle plastic garbage bags by spinning them into yarn. The sale of small gifts made from this yarn provide income for many who would otherwise be unemployed.

Read the article, and see some amazing art work done with "trash".


Here are some recycled aluminum cans from the Red Bull Art of Can gallery


Keeping Tabs has some great ideas for using pull tabs as wearable art.

Knitters and Crocheters this is a great tip! Wash out your coffee cans and dry them good. Punch a hole in the plastic lid. Make sure the hole is smooth. If you don't have a hole punch, you can heat the head of a screw driver and melt a hole in the plastic. This will make a nice smooth hole.

Now you have a container for a ball or cone of yarn. Just put the yarn in the coffee can, start the yarn through the hole in the lid, put the lid on the can and you won't have to chase your yarn all over the floor!

There are many sites encouraging individuals to crochet their plastic grocery bags into permanent totes to take with them to the grocery store and cut down on the amount of plastic going into our landfills.

Instructions for crocheting tote bags from plastic grocery bags

Projects for recycling plastic bags

Simple instructions for crocheting with plastic bags


Or you can crochet sun bonnets, slippers, coin purses.










Or how about an evening bag from VCR Tape?

more ideas here

Every time I do a search to get more ideas, different sites come up. I've started cutting all my plastic bags- grocery, bread, potato, and those thin produce bags- into strips and winding them into balls. It doesn't take much time to cut and wind, and they take up much less storage room while I'm collecting them.

If you belong to a group or a club, you could encourage everyone to make recycled items and have an auction for a charity.

What do you have that can be recycled? Do you make jewelry, and maybe have an old necklace or bracelet that is outdated and you don't wear it any longer? Can you take it apart and use parts of it to make new items?

Paper has two sides as someone else pointed out. If you get a lot of junk mail that has one blank side you can cut the pages into strips for to-do notes or shopping lists instead of using those handy post-it-notes.

One person's contribution may not make a big difference, but that doesn't mean one person shouldn't recycle. Your neighbors and friends will get caught up in the idea and either recycle their plastic and paper, or give it to you to be recycled.

What can you think of to lessen the burden on our landfills, and/or provide a little income for yourself, someone who really needs a helping hand, or a charity?

If you're like most people you have a pile of socks with no mates. All washers and dryers seem to eat them. These can be used for dust cloths, hand puppets or sock dolls.

Ink marks on a favorite blouse? Seems a terrible waste to throw it away. Find a stencil of a pretty design and use fabric paint to paint over the ink stain, or incorporate the stain into a design.

Juice stains on a favorite garment? Twist it up, tie it up as for tie dying and soak the whole garment in the same juice. Add salt to the rinse water to help set the "dye".

Cut the buttons off any clothing before discarding it. Remember your Grandma's button box? I had fun for hours playing with buttons. Older children can, with some supervision make jewelery from buttons by just stringing them together. I'm sure they can make a lot more things too. Fun for a rainy day!

Those favorite jeans finally got so holey they just have to go? Cut the legs off and make a tote from the top. Cut the straps from the legs.

So what do you recycle? Can you think of more things to use that are normally thrown away?

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