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Reusing and Recycling 101

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Green Goes Simple


Green Goes Simple: Conservation at Home

Reusing and Recycling 101

By Dana Goeglein for Green Goes Simple

You want to be green, but it’s hard to know the difference between reusing and recycling. Fortunately, it’s not that complicated. Recycling and reusing have the same goal: to keep items out of overflowing landfills. The two tactics just go about it in very different ways.

Recycling involves reprocessing an old item — such as a can, glass or newspaper — and turning it into something new. Recycled paper products may be reprocessed into toilet paper and old tires may become a compound used to resurface roads.

Reusing, on the other hand, means avoiding the reprocessing plant altogether. Old items like containers, bags and appliances can be used again in their current condition for a similar — or completely different — purpose. Takeout containers can be turned into food storage (think: free plastic containers!), and plastic bags can be transformed into waterproof liners for planters or drawers.

“Reusing extends the lifetime of a product, from the time it is purchased to the time it goes to a landfill [or recycling plant],” explains Janine Kubert, director of operations at iReuse, a company that helps businesses and individuals become better reusers.

When you extend the lifetime of a product, you not only reduce the need to buy something new (which takes energy to produce), but you also save on the energy it would take to recycle that product. “Reusing allows us to get the most out of our virgin products and raw materials, and aside from reducing consumption entirely, it is our best resource for waste reduction,” says Kubert.

Whether you’re an avid recycler or new to waste reduction, here are some simple ways to reuse and recycle every day:

Reuse

  • Reuse bags, boxes and containers. For example, turn old shoe boxes into storage containers, packaging for gifts or a treasure chest (have kids cut out pictures from magazines and glue them to the outside of the box for a customized container).
  • Rather than buying a new product, borrow, rent or share items you use infrequently or for a short period of time.
  • When babies and kids outgrow toys, books, cribs, high chairs and strollers, sell or donate the items rather than throw them away.
  • Invest in quality, durable products. You may spend more initially, but they’ll last longer, which saves you money over time.

Recycle

  • Become a full-circle recycler. Buy products that can be recycled; sort and discard them according to your community’s standards; and finally, purchase products made from post-recycled materials.
  • For more information about recyclable materials, check out the EPA’s website: Epa.gov/waste/conserve/rrr/recycle.htm.

Going Above and Beyond
While waste reduction starts at home, communities nationwide are forming around the premise that less is more. Freecycle (Freecycle.org) — started in Tucson, Ariz., before spreading throughout the U.S. — helps people be the best possible reusers. Through the Freecycle network, members are able to donate — or pick up — used products, such as appliances, furniture, toys and bikes.

In need of a reduce, reuse and recycle tutorial? Companies like iReuse (iReuse.com) give personalized consultations to help you reduce waste, donate reusable products and save money.

If you’re not sure about your community’s procedures or standards for reusing and recycling, check your town’s government Web site or ask a neighbor. Through community boards, donation banks and home and school recycling programs, it’s getting even easier to do more to waste less.

Dana Goeglein received a bachelor’s in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s in food studies from New York University. She is a writer, yoga instructor and whole foods educator in New York City, where she strives to help others create harmonious, connected lives.
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Green Goes Simple: Family Footprints

Spring Fling: Helping Kids Go Green This Season

By Amy Levin-Epstein for Green Goes Simple


Did you become greener after becoming a parent? Then you joined a conscientious club of moms and dads who increased their eco-efforts as their family grew.

“To me, there are two aspects to being green: The first is about how you and your family affect the environment, and the second is about how you let the environment affect your family,” says Dr. Jenn Berman, mother of 4-year-old twin girls, and author of the eco-friendly book SuperBaby: 12 Ways to Give Your Child a Head Start in the First 3 Years. Plus, “compassion for the earth inspires compassion for other people and animals,” she says. Try these six tips from Berman and other eco-experts to help your kids live greener lives this spring.

Make Composting a Family Affair
For Mary Talalay, an eco-friendly writer and mother of one in Maryland, composting is a huge part of her family’s green efforts. “We started a simple compost pile by fencing off a small section of our yard — away from the dogs’ prying noses — and now we literally never throw kitchen scraps anywhere but the compost pile,” says Talalay. “I weighed one of our daily tubs of scraps, and it was about a pound of carrot peels, orange peels and the like. That’s 365 pounds of waste that makes worms happy and stays out of the landfill!”

Go Meatless on Mondays
Switching the whole family over to vegetarianism might be too big of an undertaking for your family plan, but just one meat-free day a week can have a positive effect on your family — and the earth. “Research has shown that animal agriculture is the single largest source of methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide,” says Berman.

Lead by Example
If you forget to recycle those empty plastic bottles or turn off the lights when you leave the house, your kids will too. “How we act is so important,” says Bruce Harley, author of Cut Your Energy Bills Now: 150 Smart Ways to Save Money and Make Your Home More Comfortable and Green. “The lesson of bringing cloth grocery bags to the store is lost if it takes a 6,000-pound SUV to bring two of us to the store in the first place.”

Rack up Environmental Goodwill at Goodwill
Secondhand stores save gently worn clothes from ending up in landfills, which makes them a great — and wallet-friendly — way to green your family’s wardrobe. “We bring clothes to Goodwill and we also shop there,” says Talalay. “Sometimes I feel like I am renting clothes because we buy things there, my daughter wears them until they’re too small, and back to Goodwill they go if they’re still in good condition.”

Make Showering a Water-saving Game
Kids like to compete, so the most fun way to make bath time green is by making it a game. “Shower timers in the bathroom are an easy and fun way for kids to get used to using less water and taking shorter showers,” says Caroline Howell, founder of Green Beanie.  “No one wants to be a ‘water waster,’ as we call it at my house.”

Watch Your Garden Grow — Together
Have a picky eater? Green gardening is a great way to make sure your family is eating more wholesome veggies, says Talalay. Kids who help dig in the dirt will be excited to see — and eat! — the fruits of their labor. And you’ll rest easy knowing that the food you grew flourished naturally.

Photo Credit: Andy Cawood

Amy Levin-Epstein is a freelance writer who’s been published in magazines like Glamour, Self and Prevention, on websites like AOL, Babble and Details.com and in newspapers like the New York Post and the Boston Globe. You can read more of her writing at AmyLevinEpstein.com.

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Be a Green Guest

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Green Goes Simple


Green Goes Simple: Conservation at Home

Be a Green Guest

By Marisa Belger for Green Goes Simple


Summer is all about weekend escapes — to the beach, to the lake, to the mountains and beyond. And while getaway accommodations can take many different forms, they often involve the hospitality of friends or family.

If you’ve ever been on the hosting end, you know that opening your home to guests is a great act of warmth and generosity. This year, try acknowledging the gift of a cozy bed and wonderful company with an eco-savvy hostess present that shows how much you appreciate being welcomed into someone’s home. Hey, think of all the money you’re saving in hotel costs!

Emily Anderson, author of Eco Chic Home, recommends giving gifts that are thoughtful — without being showy. “When I give a hostess gift, I want it to be a nice gesture of appreciation, but not something over-the-top,” she says. “I’m also sure to think of something that my hosts will put to good use.”

While a bottle of (organic) wine or a pretty (soy-based) candle are classic options, Anderson also likes exercising a bit of creativity in her gift-giving. The results are meaningful and earth-friendly:

A Home for Lonely Cups
“I’m always collecting orphan pieces of china at the thrift store,” says Anderson. “Creamers, sugar jars and, of course, teacups, which all make excellent hostess gifts.” To complete the gift, Anderson fills the piece with a small satchel of her favorite organic fair-trade tea and ties a ribbon around to hold it all together.

The Artist Within
“I happen to think that everyone could use a little more art in their lives,” says Anderson. She suggests pairing nontoxic watercolor paints with a small pad of recycled paper. Tie a ribbon around the package and you’ve got an instantly creative hostess gift.

Practical and Pretty
To assist your hosts in living green, Anderson suggests giving the practical gift of dishcloths. “You can never have enough dishcloths,” says Anderson. Make it a pretty present by rolling up three new cotton towels — bonus points if they’re organic — and tying them together with a ribbon.

Grow a Green Thumb
“Just because someone doesn’t have a green thumb doesn’t mean they can’t learn to become a gardener,” says Anderson. She suggests giving your hosts a small bucket filled with a few seed packets and a pair of gardening gloves.

Marisa Belger’s work has appeared in Travel + Leisure Family, Natural Health, Prevention and TODAYShow.com, where she wrote a column about eco-friendly living. She was an editor at Lime.com and collaborated with author Josh Dorfman on his bestselling books, The Lazy Environmentalist and The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget.
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How’s does your garden grow?

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Green Goes Simple


Green Goes Simple: Conservation at Home

How Does Your Garden Grow?

By Elizabeth Barker for Green Goes Simple


Planting and cultivating a garden with your family can offer a bounty of benefits to you and your kids. Along with fostering your kids’ fondness for fresh fruits and veggies, gardening with your children can enhance their eco-consciousness.

“It’s so valuable for kids to see the direct effect of their taking care of the earth,” says Rose Judd-Murray, education specialist for the National Gardening Association. What’s more, working in the garden gives kids hands-on learning about hard-to-grasp concepts, like reducing pesticide use and preventing soil erosion.

Even if you’ve never picked up a trowel, starting a garden can be a snap! Here, four easy ways to build a kid-friendly plot that thrives:

1. Get Prepped
First, size up the soil quality and sunlight availability in your backyard. Choose a space that sees about six hours or more of sunshine each day. To prepare soil for planting, you can add composted matter (a great way to use the contents of your kitchen compost can, if you have one). Then, loosen the soil to give roots a place to grow, and remove any visible weeds. For more tips on prepping soil, visit Garden.org. Don’t be afraid to start small, says Judd-Murray. “You don’t need to dig up your entire lawn,” she says. “You can just begin with a couple of containers, or go to a garden center and pick up some transplants that pop right out of the plastic and into the ground.”

2. Choose Your Crops
When gardening with little ones, keep short attention spans in mind and include a few seeds that won’t take too long to sprout — think carrots and radishes for vegetable gardens, sunflowers and zinnias for flower plots. And while inspiring kids to try new veggies is a great gardening perk, focusing on foods they already love is also essential. “Children might like to plant raspberries to make their own jam, for instance, or grow the ingredients for homemade pizza sauce — such as tomatoes, peppers, onions, marjoram, garlic and basil,” says Elizabeth McCorquodale, author of Kids in the Garden.

3. Add an Eco-element
To teach your kids that plants can flourish naturally, look to eco-options for pest control. “Keeping plants healthy so they can defend themselves is key, so make sure to nourish them with homemade compost and use mulch to seal in moisture,” says McCorquodale. Building barriers from ground eggshells can also shield your plants from attack, she notes. And introducing beneficial bugs like ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies can provide natural defense against the bad bugs and stop them from chowing down on your crops.

4. Cultivate Your Kid’s Green Thumbs
As your children get gardening, take note of the tasks they most enjoy. “Some kids will love the digging and weeding and organizing, while others will get a thrill from the competition of growing the fattest, sweetest or shiniest plants,” says McCorquodale. To keep that enthusiasm from waning, she recommends dividing the more tedious gardening duties into brief blocks of time.

Setting your kids up for gardening success is also a smart move, according to McCorquodale. “Give the children their own sunny corner and fill it with the best weed-free soil,” she suggests. “When it comes to nurturing their love for gardening, remember that a little success can go a long way.”
Elizabeth Barker is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and executive editor of fashion blog NoGoodForMe.com. Her work has appeared in Body + Soul, Natural Health, Vegetarian Times, Variety and Kiwi.
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Better for Baby

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Green Goes Simple

Better for Baby

By Marisa Belger for Green Goes Simple

Look for Natural Playthings

Babies put everything in their mouths, especially their playthings. Toys made from plastic can sometimes contain not-so-healthy chemicals. To stay safe, skip gear made with PVC and choose toys made from natural materials like wood or bamboo.


Photo: @iStockphoto.com/trait2lumiere

Go With Glass Bottles

When it comes to bottles, glass is usually safest. Just like in toys, many plastic bottles contain potentially harmful chemicals, such as BPA (bisphenol A), which can leech into your baby’s milk or formula. Glass bottles don’t contain these chemicals — plus they can be recycled, which adds to their eco-benefits.


Photo: @iStockphoto.com/burwellphotography

Wash With Cold Water

Laundry is an inevitable part of life with baby. Keep your cutie’s clothes looking fresh and new — and conserve energy! — by washing them on the delicate cycle in cold water. To get the most out of each load, look for detergents that are designed for use in cold water.


Photo: @iStockphoto.com/AndrejaD

Borrow or Buy Gently Used Items

There’s no need to invest in new, fancy furniture and accessories for your tiny new addition. Look into borrowing a crib (you’ll need to buy a new mattress), car seat and high chair from a friend or family member. Visit a secondhand store for gear that’s been gently used, or check out options on Freecyle.org or Craigslist.org. Whether you’re borrowing or buying secondhand, just be sure to check for any recent recalls on CPSC.gov.

Create a Nurturing Nursery

The air your baby breathes is just as important as the clothes he wears and the milk he drinks. When decorating your baby’s room, choose paints with low- or zero-VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) and be sure that lots of natural light fills the space.


Photo: @iStockphoto.com/wakila

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Go Green for Earth Month

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Green Goes Simple


Green Goes Simple: Conservation at Home

Go Green for Earth Month

By Elizabeth Dwoskin for Green Goes Simple

There’s nothing more precious to parents than their kids — nothing more important than making sure they are as healthy and as safe as possible. Earth Month is the perfect time for parents to put their kids first by making small, easy changes that protect the health of both their little ones and the earth.

While parents can’t control every aspect of their kid’s lives — though most wish they could — there is one place where they can take full charge: the home. And these days, lots of parents are looking for green solutions to make their homes more sustainable. Don’t you wish that you had someone to just whisper in your ear, giving you quick and easy green tips every time you needed them?

Enter Janelle Sorenson, chief communications officer for Healthy Child Healthy World. For 20 years, this nonprofit group has been all about giving families the tools they need to create cleaner, greener and safer homes. Sorenson gave us some easy suggestions that you can use to start greening your home — and saving money — right away.

1. Add some cool, clean air to your home.
Because children have sensitive lungs, the quality of indoor air is a big factor in creating a sustainable home. Indoor air can actually be more polluted and contaminated than the air outside. That’s because asthma triggers, including chemicals, dust and particles from outdoors, can settle into furniture. And inside there’s no sunlight to break down contaminants, or wind to blow them away.

To improve your indoor air quality, there are some easy things you can do, like having a no-shoe house (this cuts down on the grime that gets tracked indoors) and opening your windows once a day. Sorenson also recommends vacuuming with a HEPA (high efficiency particle) filter. “Your carpet can really become a sink for whatever is in your air — dust, pollen and the dirt you track inside with you.”

Another super-simple remedy for improving indoor air quality is keeping lots of plants around your house. Sorensen recommends placing one medium- to large-size plant every 100 feet. NASA — which for years has been studying what plants will help purify the air inside a spaceship — has discovered three common houseplants that do wonders for cleaning up the air: areca palm, mother-in-law’s tongue, and money plants. These are all like oxygen factories in that they remove volatile organic chemicals from the air.

2. Cut down on pesticides.
Pesticides may get rid of bugs, but they’ve been linked to asthma, hormone imbalances, and even learning disabilities in children. Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid exposing your kids to these toxins.

With spring and summer on the way, kids are going to start playing outside again — and that means bites from the buzzing critters that live in our backyards. If you have red ant piles around your house, one green solution is to sprinkle chili pepper flakes around them. Ants despise chili pepper; they won’t go near it. And for fruit flies, and even mosquitoes, potted basil just might do the trick. When your kids go out to play, try rubbing basil leaves on them as a toxin-free substitute for bug spray.

“These are all tricks that our grandparents probably knew, but we’ve become so used to just reaching for the first thing on the shelf that we forgot them,” says Sorensen.

If those pesky summertime mosquitoes still won’t stop devouring your kids, make your own bug repellent by combining eucalyptus, lavender, citronella and geranium oil — all of which naturally repel bugs.

3. Teach your kids to stay green even when they’re not at home.
While making easy green changes at home is a great start, kids are ambassadors of eco-friendliness who will take these lessons and more on the road with them. Teach your kids that little changes can make a big difference.

An easy ways to do this? Encourage them to bring a reusable lunch box and water bottle to school, instead of paper bags and plastic bottles. Let kids pick their own out so they’ll be more likely to never leave home without them.

One of the biggest away-from-home trash producers is parties, both in the classroom and at friends’ homes. Encourage your child’s teachers and the parents of his friends to switch from plastic party favors to DIY crafts or food items like cookies. Kids will like them just as much as the non-green alternatives and they’ll go a lot easier on the earth.

The most important thing is to just start somewhere. It feels good to begin making small changes toward a healthier lifestyle. And after a while, they really start to add up.


Photo: @iStockphoto.com/akurtz

Elizabeth Dwoskin is a staff writer at The Village Voice as well as a frequent writer for The New York Times. She’s also written for The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast.

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Give a Better Gift

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Green Goes Simple: The Green Scoop

Give a Better Gift

By Cynthia Ramnarace for Green Goes Simple

When I was a child, my sister and I treated piles of torn Christmas wrapping paper as if they were freshly fallen leaves — running through them, jumping on them and then helping to throw them in the trash. (Yes, I’m old enough to remember the days before recycling bins.)

Now that I have my own kids, Christmas mornings are still known for their piles of spent paper. I know all this holiday waste isn’t good for the environment, and it always makes me feel a little eco-guilt. So this year I made a plan based on a simple question: How can I waste less stuff?

Try these easy ideas for minimizing your family’s holiday waste:

Reusable Bags
Instead of wrapping presents, I’m buying a few dozen blank canvas grocery bags. My daughter Mira, 6, will love using fabric paint to personalize each one!

Recycled Gift Tags
Gift cards are lovely, but they hit the recycling bin once the holiday is over. Not this year! I plan to cut out designs from last year’s cards to reuse as gift tags. As for the cards I send, I’m going to send greeting cards with imbedded seeds that can be planted in your garden and sprout flowers come spring. (Check out the cards from the Greenfield Paper Company

Green Gift Wrap
Giving Grandma a sweater? Why wrap the garment box? Instead, I’ll tape the sides shut and glue one of my kids’ many pieces of artwork to the center.

Natural Ornaments
A few tree ornaments will inevitably break each year. In the past, I always bought new ones to replace them. But I love this idea from foodie and mom Damaris Santos-Palmer: Dry orange slices in the oven and then hang them from your tree. “They look like beautiful stained glass,” says Santos-Palmer. “After we’re finished with the season, we just put it in our compost bin. Done.”

What I love most about these ideas isn’t that they reduce holiday waste — although that’s great! It’s that my kids can help me accomplish them. I can’t wait to see those orange slices shining on my tree, breathe in their scent, and tell my kids: “Hey, we made that!”

Cynthia Ramnarace is a freelance writer in Queens, N.Y. She is a regular contributor to iVillage.com and AARP Bulletin. Her work also appears frequently in American Baby and Kiwi magazines.

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Conservation with Kids

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Green Goes Simple: Family Footprints
Conservation With Kids

By Cynthia Ramnarace for Green Goes Simple

“Mommy, you’re not saving the Earth.” Mira folded her 6-year-old arms at me as I cleaned the stove while the water ran idly in the sink.

She was right. I told her so and turned off the tap.

My kids — Mira and 3-year-old Miles — have turned out to be excellent ambassadors for the three R’s: reusing, recycling and reducing. They know that a pair of scissors, a rubber band and some markers can transform a paper towel roll into a fashionable set of binoculars. And when we’re out and about, we never toss an empty water bottle in the trash simply because a recycling bin is out of sight; Mira, for one, advocates bringing the plastic bottle home and disposing of it properly.

These are great first steps, but I’m continually in search of new ways to encourage earth-friendly activities around the house. After all, just last summer I still fielded requests to fill the kiddie pool daily, and I often caught a little one standing in front of an open fridge leisurely assessing its contents.

So I asked some eco-minded moms for tips on encouraging conservation and reducing waste among the younger set. Here’s what they said.

1. Enlist your kids’ imaginations.
Before you recycle a soda bottle, cardboard box or glass jar, ask your kids if they think there’s a way to reuse it. For inspiration, consider what Sheri Amsel’s kids created with a 2-liter plastic bottle. Amsel, author of 365 Ways to Live Green for Kids: Saving the Environment at Home, School, or at Play — Every Day!, helped them create terrariums filled with plants and the occasional small creature. They also used them to store marbles, rocks and action figures.

2. Give them responsibility.
Looking for the perfect starter chore for your young kids? Put them in charge of recycling. Let them decorate each bin — paper, plastic, glass — with pictures, stickers and designs. Then make a game out of recycling, suggests Morgan McKean, blogger at TheGreenChick.me and mother of 5-year-old Jamil.

“Gather several disposable items from around your house, hold them up in front of your children and ask, ‘Recycle or trash?’” says McKean. This teaches kids about recycling, but it also shows them how much waste winds up in the garbage bin. And that might spark ideas for ways to use less!

As kids get older, they’ll outgrow sorting games like this one. Amsel suggests putting older kids in charge of collecting the redeemable recyclables. Their incentive? They can keep whatever money they make at the recycling center.

3. Make it fun.
To get her 5-year-old son to use less water, McKean uses a game called Beat the Timer. Whenever he’s watering plants in the yard or using the shower or sink, McKean sets a timer and challenges him to finish before the buzzer goes off. “This makes water conservation fun and establishes a pattern for respecting water and our limited supply of it,” she says.

“The same can be done with the refrigerator door, I realized. Now my kids count to 10 once they open the door. If they haven’t figured it out by then, they get what mommy picks.”

4. Lead by example.
Last but not least, be a good model. “As much as we want kids to do it on their own, they really model after us,” says Amsel. “So if we reuse things and talk about why we’re reusing them, kids pick up on that.”

Cynthia Ramnarace is a freelance writer in Queens, N.Y. She is a regular contributor to iVillage.com and AARP Bulletin. Her work also appears frequently in American Baby and Kiwi magazines.

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The Planet Friendly Kitchen

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The Planet-Friendly Kitchen

By Cynthia Ramnarace for Green Goes Simple

Without a doubt, the kitchen is the most popular room in my house. From meal prep to mealtime, homework to crafts, it’s the center of our family life — and the ultimate candidate for a recent eco-makeover.

In the interest of increasing my sustainability IQ, I first took inventory of what I knew about conservation in the kitchen:

1. Don’t leave the water running. (This one’s easy — if I slip, there’s a 6-year-old water watchdog always ready to remind me.)
2. Recycle.
3. Stock up on non-disposable plates and utensils and embrace the durability of reusable shopping totes.

This is a good start, but my kitchen — and I — clearly needed professional assistance if we were going to take it to the next level. This is where green living expert Annie Bond came in. The author of Home Enlightenment: Create a Nurturing, Healthy and Toxin-Free Home shared some surprising tips for transforming everyone’s favorite room into an environmentally savvy space:

The Dishwasher is a “Do.” A full dishwasher uses less water to clean a day’s worth of dirty dishes than hand-washing them in the sink.

DIY Dishrags. “Let’s say you’ve got a pair of old, unused pajamas made from beautiful soft fabric,” says Bond. Grab a pair of scissors and give them new life as dishrags and hand towels. But get ready for a bigger laundry basket — these need to be washed daily to prevent bacterial growth.

Compost your Scraps. Vegetable peels, fruit rinds and coffee grinds make excellent garden fertilizers. If you have an in-house compost bin, you can keep unwanted odors away by cleaning it out every couple of days.

Downsize your Oven. When you can, bypass the energy-guzzling oven and stove in favor of smaller cooking appliances. Look beyond toast, and you’ll find that a toaster oven is ideal for heating up or cooking small amounts of food. Slow cookers and electric kettles are also everyday energy savers.

Use Natural Critter Control. Bond recommends trading chemical pesticides for the homemade variety. Drop a few cotton balls into a small glass jar and fill it halfway with a mixture of 1 part Borax (a natural pesticide), 1 part sugar and 3 parts water. Watch as the ants go marching one by one into the jar, where they take their final swim.

I took Bond’s suggestions for my kitchen and found an added bonus: These tips are time savers too! Filling the dishwasher is faster than washing dishes, and toaster oven cuisine is refreshingly speedy. Saving time and the earth — what’s not to love?

Cynthia Ramnarace is a freelance writer in Queens, N.Y. She is a regular contributor to iVillage.com and AARP Bulletin. Her work also appears frequently in American Baby and Kiwi magazines.

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Transform Your Trash

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Green Goes Simple: Conservation at Home

Transform Your Trash

By Marisa Belger for Green Goes Simple

The jars came first. Instead of sending my growing collection of empty glass receptacles to their usual fate at the bottom of the recycle bin, I did something unexpected — something wild. I peeled off their labels and plopped them in the dishwasher.

I wanted to see just what would happen if I gave these jars another chance. Full disclosure: I was motivated not only by the thought of transforming trash into something new, something useful, even something cool, but also by the fact that jars were clogging up my kitchen. You see, we’re a jar-centric family, tearing through what I’m starting to believe is an abnormal amount of pickles, mustard (the spicy French and yellow varieties), sauces of both apple and tomato, and jams and jellies.

Bright and sparkling, fresh from a wash, empty jars were exactly what I was missing. Without their labels and sticky contents, these vessels found instant new homes as beverage glasses (drinking jars are big on rustic charm), loose-change receptacles, pen holders, and — my all-time favorite — vases. Nobody can resist a mason jar filled with daisies. Nobody.

Not a fan of pickles? No problem. Jars aren’t the only way to reuse that which you’d otherwise throw out. Paper towel tubes, shoe boxes and detergent bottles are all contenders for a useful second act.

Paper Towel Tubes
Pulling the last paper towel from the roll used to signal the end of something, but now it’s the start of something new. Paper towel tubes in their natural state are the ultimate building blocks for art projects — they provide hours of rainy day entertainment with kids — and they serve practical purposes too. Try these ideas:

  1. Glue on a pair of paper wings or a tail, then draw on a face for an instant cardboard-tube animal.
  1. Attach two tubes and decorate with paint and stickers for a pair of homemade binoculars.
  1. Turned upright and outfitted with orange and yellow paper flames, paper towel tubes make fantastic fire-free candlesticks. Decorate them in orange and black for Halloween, or choose a Christmas or Hanukkah theme.
  1. Adults can put paper towel tubes to good use by employing them to prop up droopy windows or to hold silverware and sharp knives when camping or picnicking.

Detergent/Fabric Softener Bottles
Empty, clean detergent and fabric softener bottles can be transformed into hand-held shovels or scoops (simply use a utility knife to cut off the bottom off the bottle). Adults and kids can use these in the garden and at the beach. Bonus: remove the cap and you have a funnel!

Shoe Boxes
Yes, shoe boxes are ideal for household organizing (think: recipe cards, old love letters, office items, sewing supplies, Legos, electric cords and much more). But they’re even more versatile than that. Moving? Shoe boxes are ideal for packing smaller, loose items like tchotchkes, silverware, medicine bottles and the like. Gifting? Cover them with decorative paper, and you’ve got a homemade (and let’s admit it — more meaningful!) present package.

Marisa Belger’s work has appeared in Travel + Leisure Family, Natural Health, Prevention and on the TODAYShow.com. She was a founding editor of Lime.com — which specialized in wellness and sustainable living — and she collaborated with author Josh Dorfman on his bestselling books, The Lazy Environmentalist and The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget.

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