[img]958|left|Alex Campbell||no_popup[/img]Dateline Boston — I’m big into recycling. Every week I sort my trash into bags — one for newspapers, another for glass and plastic. I recycle as I go, too — when the toilet paper is done, the cardboard roll goes into the paper bag. Jelly jars, store-bought plastic bottles, the container for my contact lenses; they all go in. Scrap paper and junk mail go into the shredder and then into the paper bag.
[img]965|left|||no_popup[/img]That’s ordinary recycling, pretty standard stuff these days. Then there’s serious reusing behavior, where you use and repair and use until there’s no more you can do. I do that, too. When I’m at the end of my shampoo bottle, I put water in it and get at least five more washes out of it. Works for pump soap, too. At the preschool where I teach, we fill our soap dispenser with a huge bottle of liquid soap. At the end, I put water in it, shake it up, and call it “Special Soap.” It’s foamier, gets kids to wash their hands, and uses up all the soap till there’s no more. I saved a tattered woven basket from being thrown away by wrapping it completely in duct tape. It holds crayons, and is still going strong after five years.
At my preschool, however, no one is better at using materials to the nth degree than my boss, Rosie. That woman could build a city out of reused materials. If the kids don’t finish their water at snack time, Rosie uses it to water the plants. That goes for the water from the dehumidifier in the summer, too. She saves and reuses masking tape (see photo). She takes the little bits of tape and puts them on the wall behind the calendar. Whenever a child wants a piece of tape, he or she just goes behind the calendar and gets one, thus eliminating the need for the teacher to tear a strip of tape off the roll and then tearing it into smaller pieces.
I’ve learned to save the bits left behind from the rice cakes we eat for snack. Rosie saves them up and eats them as cereal. In the summer, we make our own popsicles using juice. When you remove the popsicle from the holder, there’s a tiny bit of juice left at the very bottom. After watching Rosie do it several times, I now take it upon myself to pour the popsicle container into a bowl and then pour the juice into a cup for Rosie. You can get almost a whole cup out of leftover popsicle drips. Nothing gets wasted.
My favorite reuse example from my preschool, however, is about stickers. We have these foam stickers that are lots of fun. You peel off the white backing, and stick the foam piece on your paper. At cleanup time, wait! Don’t throw the backings away. You can put the backings in a phone book and flatten them for a few months. When they’re nice and flat, you can use them in a gluing project. The other day I showed the kids what a phone book was because, of course, they didn’t know. I showed them how you could use one of these ancient artifacts to flatten leaves as well as the backs of stickers. Lo and behold, I pulled out several leaves from 2008 and had a good time making them into instant puppets.
My friends are inventive, too. I know someone who saves slivers of soap. Until I met him, he used to save up a bunch, then add a little water to them to make a whole new soap. I showed him a product I learned about in Japan. It’s a little mesh bag for the kitchen sink, though I use it for the shower. You put your soap slivers in the bag, and it lathers up nicely as if it’s a regular bar of soap. It extends the life of the soap slivers for weeks!
Another friend of mine makes soap out of bacon fat. I won’t go into detail on that one, I’ll just say that I’ll eat breakfast at his house, but maybe not take a shower there.
My last story is about my cat and the BP oil spill. I brought long-haired Shelby to the vet to have her matted fur shaved. She’s getting on in years, and doesn’t groom herself as she ought to anymore. The vet shaved off a heck of a lot of fur. She was about to toss it, when she suddenly remembered that fur was being saved to clean up the oil spill disaster. They put collected fur in pantyhose and soak up the oil, apparently. How is that for creativity? Now I can honestly say that my cat Shelby helped to clean up the oil spill.
Next time you get ready to toss something in the trash, wait a minute. Who knows what else it can be used for? Use your imagination, and do your part to save the planet.
Ms. Campbell may be contacted at her new address, snobbyblog@gmail.com
