We live in a society where much gets thrown away. We have disposable pie tins, disposable cups, plates, and silverware, disposable diapers, disposable milk cartons, and so much more.
Imagine living in a space colony, you'd have to pay more attention, and not create too much trash, if any.
But you don't need to live on Mars to be aware of recycling and re-using things. I think it's very important that we all do this, it's important for our earth, but also, we really don't need all that disposable stuff.
Here are some things I re-use regularly. Maybe others can chime in and give ideas also?
- Yogurt cups. My yogurt cups are used for planting. I wash them out, make a small hole in the bottom, and use them for my indoor planting.
- Cat litter buckets. I use them as storage containers for garden seeds, small tools, plastic bags, electronics (cables mostly), old rags, etc... they stack really well too.
- Old towels are used as cat bedding, and also to keep the draft from under the door in the hallway. They are also used as rags.
- Old socks. I once read about using old socks as dust rags. Best things ever to dust. Stick your hand in the sock, spray it with a little lysol or other cleaner, and you have the best dust rag ever.
Plastic grocery bags. We have so many uses for them around the house. Oh the things I've done with plastic grocery bags. Just this past winter I discovered that if I put one of those on my head over my hat, my head stays warmer. (I live in a super cold area).
I've put plastic grocery bags over my boots to keep them from smelling later, after I work on the manure pile. It helps.
They are also used as liners in the kitchen trash can.
I've also used them as "filling" in packages that I've sent. This really is a good use for them, it's just as good as any filler you'd use, and it's free.
I put my sweaters in them when I store them during the summer so that they don't catch dust. (Yeah I'm cheap, I know, lol)
An important thing that we recycle here are sunflower stalks. We grow sunflowers for the chickens. At the end of the season we harvest them all, cut the flowers off to dry the seeds, and store the stalks in the shed. The next season, we use the stalks to build a trellis for the beans. It works great and it's all natural.
Sounds to me like you really found a lot of unique uses for plastic bags. We just use them for trash can liners and for when we need to clean out the cat's litter box. And maybe it's because we don't grow sunflowers, but we would have never thought of using the stalks to build a trellis, lol. Seriously, though, I think it's a good thing to reuse things as much as possible. One thing we've done with plastic milk jugs is cut off the tops, fill them with potting soil, and grow tomatoes in them. It's a super cheap way to do indoor gardening and we have fresh tasty tomatoes that haven't been sitting in a warehouse forever.
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