Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Who's in for February?

A quick re-hash of the (very loose) guidelines:

* No item is too big or too small to be on the list. If you're like "This month, I will recycle all my Whitman's Sampler boxes (as I do every month)," cool. If you're like, "This month, I will find a creative re-use for the twenty bouquets of dead roses my ex-girlfriends sent in a coordinated assault" ... I hope we can help with suggestions.

* You don't have to jump in every single month. If you do, cool. I would love the company. If you want to just drop in on the months where you're not meeting yourself coming and going, cool.

* You don't have to nail all three things -- Reducing, Reusing and Recycling -- every month. If you do, great. Because -- again -- I would love the company. But maybe some months, you're not up for thinking of novel re-uses for your 15 voodoo dolls. That's okay.

* The point is for us to put our collective brains to use, and get a mental grip on our material worlds. 

So ... What will you be reducing this month? What about re-using? Recycling?

This month: I will be figuring out how to reduce my Swiffer cloth usage (and not just by sweeping less), re-use the spent soil in my winter gardening containers and recycle more rainwater.

Comments

[Tracy]

I'm in again... and I need help. My reduce and recycle are easy-peasy... we're going to reduce overall water usage, and recycle circular plastic lids (which the Child needs for a school math project, and the teachers have asked parents to send everything we can find, in case some kids don't bring enough in. Be careful what you wish for, Fifth Grade Teachers...)

My problem is in the area of Re-Use. The one thing that really jumps out at me are our plastic water bottles -- we consume about a flat of bottled water per week, and it's far and away the top item that goes out for recycle pick-up. I'd like to refill them... but the whole reason we buy bottled in the first place is because our tap water tastes icky.

Maybe this is too ambitious a re-use? I've toyed with buying gallons of drinking water and refilling the bottles... but it'll never happen. I'll never, ever do it.

So, am open to ideas, or will happily steal from someone else's list for February.

[Becky]

The one thing that really jumps out at me are our plastic water bottles -- we consume about a flat of bottled water per week, and it's far and away the top item that goes out for recycle pick-up. I'd like to refill them... but the whole reason we buy bottled in the first place is because our tap water tastes icky.

Tracy, have you considered renting a water cooler and getting the 5-gallon jugs of bottled water? I don't know if that's available everywhere, but we do that, and it's incredibly convenient. They deliver the new jugs and pick up the empties, and we pay as we go. I don't think it's much more expensive than buying flats of bottled water.

I'm in for reuse and recycle this month:
Recycle: I want to get better at recycling all the little scraps of paper in a day -- lists, receipts, ticket stubs, post-its, those cardboard hot drink holders, etc.

Reuse: I have a peacoat whose inner lining is badly torn in several places, and I'm looking into getting it repaired.

[Janna]

I'm going to try to both reduce and reuse by bringing a lunch and coffee everyday instead of buying one. I'm always sort of disgusted by the amount of trash take-out produces, so I'd like to curb that by bringing food in a reusable tupperware container.

Heck, and I'll also save money and calories. Though I alwasy feel like I'm back in grade school when I pull out my insulated lunch box.

[Julie]

I'd like to refill them... but the whole reason we buy bottled in the first place is because our tap water tastes icky.
Tracy, you're not supposed to refill the bottled-water bottles (Evian, etc.) because the type of plastic they're made of can eventually leach into the water over and extended period of time. I read a study about it a couple years ago (I'm too lazy to track down the link right now), and they found that your best bet are the Nalgene-type bottles.

[Jana]

I bought a plastic bento lunch box from laptoplunches.com and I really like it - if anyone is considering bringing lunch to work (or a container as a way to reduce plastic bags and gladware/takeout containers), the customer service is fantastic and it's also helping me control portion sizes. (It's also the box featured on veganlunchbox.blogspot.com.)

I am cutting out all pre-packaged Diet Coke and sticking to fountain from now on to reduce my consumption even further, and I will continue packing my lunch on days when I'm off campus now that I have a box to tote it in. I am re-using a Brita pitcher instead of buying bottled water, and I am going to keep recycling my office and school paper via my boyfriend since my school and city suck at recycling.

[marylynn]

I'm in for this month. I'm going to work on Reducing and Recycling.

Reducing: I have so many unread books and I keep buying more! So, for the month of February I will not purchase another book or magazine. I will only read what is in my house already, what comes in via subscription (a fair number) and what I can borrow from the library or friends. Or I won't read anything at all.

Recycling: Almost literally - I have a bike. A pink, retro cruiser. It's lovely. It's been sitting behind my apartment under a tarp for a year. I haven't even unlocked it since I moved it and the reality is that I'm not going to ride it. So I'm going to bite the bullet and sell it. I should be able to get some good money for it. Then I'll use that money to buy books in March. Mwaa!

[Tracy]

you're not supposed to refill the bottled-water bottles (Evian, etc.) because the type of plastic they're made of can eventually leach into the water over and extended period of time

Julie, thanks for erasing the guilt I've had, lo, these many years, over the piles of plastic water bottles we amass. I was actually promoting health!

We don't have the space for a water cooler... and we've tried filling the big Nalgene bottles, and that doesn't stick. But maybe Jana has the answer -- maybe instead of finding a use for my empty bottles, we could go to Brita?

Anyway, Lisa, sorry my water bottle dilemma has hijacked. Y'all keep on!

[Bureinato]

Recycle -I'm going to focus on finding & cutting to size the cardboard boxes I need to get rid of. Our pickup requires cardboard has to be 2'x3' so I don’t always get around to it.

Reduce – I’m going get myself off of catalog and junk mail lists.

Reuse – I took in a bottle of lysterine mouthwash from a co-worker because she disliked it and I like lysterine. However it’s the orange flavored sort and I find it foul. There has to be something it’s good at cleaning!

[Lisa]

Bureinato, there's this article on using Listerine to treat either dandruff or toenail fungus. (Which sort of makes me rethink the wisdom of putting it in my mouth, but that's just me ...) I wonder if its antifungal properties could be put to use in preventing mildew in damp places? Like, if you swabbed down your tub with it, it would cut down on the mildew?

[molly]

Recycle: Investigate recycling at new house. Hopefully, at our new place there will be weekly recycling pick up. If none exists, find the nearest recycling center.

Reduce: The amount of disposable diapers I am using. I bought Gdiapers in hopes of helping the environment but son's legs are a little too skinny for them right now. My sister sent some cloth diapers, will incorporate more cloth until the Gdiapers fit better.

Just a side note on the whole bottle water thread, I love the Brita system. It was also rated the highest in filtering water. For water on the go, I just fill up an insulated coffee mug because it will also hold my coffee at the office.

[Brona]

We're trying to reduce electricity use. At work and at home I turn the monitor off when I'm not using it (rather than letting it go to sleep, that still drains power). We use CFLs while we wait for LEDs to go more mainstream.

I also want to reduce gas consumption. I have a long commute to work, so I'm looking to either switch to the downtown office, where I can take the train, or find a new job closer to home.

[ambient]

Tracy, using a filter pitcher is a great way to reduce your water bottle consumption. If you really like using bottles around the house instead of cups, you could perhaps limit yourself to one bottle a day, refilling it with cold water from the pitcher and then throwing it away at the end of the evening.

I also highly recommend Pur filters over Brita (though they're a bit harder to find in stores). It annoys me how much Brita filters deposit the little carbon balls in the bottom of your cup, while the Pur hardly deposits any. Also, their slim pitcher design (link below) holds a good bit of water in a VERY fridge-friendly shape, unlike the big round Brita designs.

http://www.amazon.com/PUR-Ultimate-Design-Water-Pitcher/dp/B000067DZV/sr=8-1/qid=1170437968/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0485259-0974529?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden

[ginger]

Just jumping in to observe that the active ingredients in Listerine, per Wikipedia, are menthol, thymol, methyl salicylate (oil of wintergreen), eucalyptol, and good old ethanol. Ethanol, of course, dissolves lipid membranes, so it's an excellent antiseptic. It kills bacteria and viruses in nothing flat, but it will also take out fungi and their spores. I think menthol, thymol and eucalyptol, being alcohol esters, would also have similar antiseptic properties, but I'm guessing those concentrations are low enough in Listerine that the real killing power comes from the ethanol. The wiki says thymol crystals are used to kill mold in old books by sealing the books into a plastic bag with them, so there may be some other fungicidal property to thymol.

So I think if you want to clean your grout with Listerine, and you can tolerate having your bathroom smell like orange medicine, it will work fine. (And it's safe to swish around in your mouth - those are pretty well-understood natural flavor agents. Well, except ethanol, which is a pretty deadly poison that people pay a ton of money to drink.)

[Bureinato]

Thanks Lisa for the links on Listerine, that's a really interesting web site. It’s the only mouthwash I know about that doesn’t use artificial sweeteners. I dislike them enough that I’d rather use something developed for surgery. :) Which I did not know until I read those links. I may rinse down the shower with the orange flavored (an abomination) stuff. Or try the rinse the scalp thing, with the cold weather my skin itches & itches. Orange scented hair might be ok.

And thanks to Tracy’s suggestions a week ago I have plans for my larger handled store shopping bags.

[Jana]

My Brita fits in the door of my fridge and cost about $9 at amazon.com. It was hard to find a big round pitcher of any kind - fridge-friendly is in, apparently, and I was pleased to find one appropriately sized for a one or two person household.

[Dellface]

I recycle my newspapers (I get weekend only) and all my magazines, catalogs and junk mail. I also recycle the plastics that I can (#1 and #2) as well as aluminum and tin cans. I'm one of the few on my street that pay extra for curbside recycling. The trash pickup in my subdivision is part of our HOA dues, but the recycling is separate and extra.

Tonight I ordered a TerraPass for my car. I vaguely remember hearing about this in "An Inconvenient Truth", but I was reminded of it again tonight while watching "Living with Ed" on HGTV. I don't put a large number of miles on my car but I figured it was a reasonable price and a responsible thing to do.

And an added bonus is that my brother and sister-in-law will be EXTREMELY impressed and jealous when they see the sticker on my car. ;-)

[LisaK]

Reduce: This is baffling me this month. I thought about reducing the amount of clothing we have in the house and donating it to charity, thereby reducing the amount of water we use for laundry. We do a LOT of laundry, and the girls have way too many clothes. Thanks Grandma! Does that count? My other thought was to reduce the amount of alcohol I buy this month and drink only what I already have. I spend a lot of money at wine.woot and have to deal with their Styrofoam packaging, which I plan to reuse/recycle later this year.

Reuse: I needed a new eye prescription, so I respectfully rejected the optician's ridiculous recommendation of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and reused my old frames. Savings? $200.

Recycle: I'm making an effort to recycle cardboard this month. I find it's been easier to recycle items if I have a spot for them while we're waiting for pickup day. The space between the fridge and the cabinets works quite well for flattened cardboard.

[drunken monkey]

Recycle: I'm making this double-pronged, because I'm having a hard time thinking of a reuse goal right now. I'm going to bring the ridiculous amounts of extra clothing I have to a local community centre, and I'm going to get rid of all those cardboard boxes I have hanging around. I always tell myself that I'm keeping them in case whatever I bought fails, but if that happens when it's under warranty I'll be damn sure going back to the store to complain, box or not. I also need to finally get rid of our beer empties. I am too lazy to bring them all to the store for the deposit; they're heavy and we have no car.

So I guess I'm just planning to recycle a lot this month.

[Matt]

Hi there !!!!

I'm looking to create a website to encourage global recycling. Global Warming has become the biggest issue of the moment and we need to do something about this. Hence this community website where I am hoping to get a lots of people together sharing news, videos, podcast, tips and so on.

I am currently still defining the scope of this project and I would like to get your ideas and suggestions.
The site would include some of the following:
• Podcasts on how to recycle.
• Photo/video documentaries on fieldtrips related to recycling.
• Video/podcast retellings of related stories.
• Tatters willing to share stories on the latest findings.
• Blogs by students about our recycling project and related news, such as reviewing websites on recycling for kids.
• Videos UTUBE style on how to recycle at school and at home.
• Links to great sites on recycling for anyone.
• Ideally this site should be international and translated into different languages.

In the immediate future, I would like some help in:
• Creating a logo / corporate image. - ideally a graphic - web designer
• Defining the scope - anyone
• Getting good tips on how to recycle junk - tatters community
• Spreading the word - anyone
• Organizing events - anyone
• Designing a flash animation for the site - ideally a graphic - web designer

Every contribution or help will receive a full credit on the site and for any professional job, we might try to raise some cash.

I'm hoping there is someone out there who could help us out. So please be nice. ;)

[Lisa]

Matt, normally I don't like to discourage commenters. However, you're not really commenting so much as you're trying to use my weblog to promote your new website, and you didn't e-mail me to make sure it was okay first.

This post and thread are for people who are either stating their own personal reuse-reduce-recycle goals, or looking for advice on general reuse-reduce-recycle issues. If you'd like to participate in the discussion that is currently taking place, you're welcome to join.

[Rebecca]

I didn't really think I had anything to contribute to this, but then I remembered something this afternoon. A while back, I bought a couple of wool sweaters at Value Village, but they didn't fit properly. However, I really like colours, and they're in good condition, so I'm going to unravel them and use the wool for other projects. This covers both the recycling and reusing!