You know the 3 'R's... Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! I think most of us though tend to focus on the first and last 'R', and kind of ignore 'Reuse'. Oh sure, maybe we save a plastic bag that we had some pretzels in and use it again the next day, or we use a stainless steel water bottle instead of buying bottled water, but how many of us really give a good effort to repurpose our "stuff" before we bury it in the recycle bin.
For example, on my way outside to do my chicken chores yesterday my wife asked me to throw out an old purse she had lying around. Rather than just send it to its final resting place in the trash, I took an opportunity to scavenge it for reusable parts. As a result, I managed to remove two nice split-ring stainless steel hoops that were holding the shoulder strap as well as the leather strap itself, which has a pretty nice stainless steel buckle on it. Undoubtedly, these will find a nice new home holding something together in the chicken coop or somewhere around the yard. (My wife also pointed out that we repurpose our fruit and veggie scraps all the time for chicken treats!)
I thought this might be a good opportunity for another Sustainable Family challenge for my countless readers around the globe! (Ha ha) During the month of March (when I assume a lot of spring cleaning will be underway), before you throw out your old junk, see if you can repurpose some or all of it to reduce what goes into the waste stream. I will do the same and when I happen upon anything particularly inventive, I'll pass it along. I'd love to hear about your successes as well, so let me know!
No comments:
Post a Comment