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A new twist on reduce, reuse, recycle

This past week, NPR’s Science Friday host Ira Flatow interviewed Cy Tymony, the author of “Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things.” The book, as the title indicates, is a how-to on ways to turn everyday items, waste especially, into cool gadgets. Among the projects listed in the table of contents are “sneaky mini-boomerang” and “solar cooker project.”

Many of them sound like they could be fun for kids but not having seen the book, I can’t vouch for it. What I would love more than anything is to hear creative ways to use all those yogurt/cottage cheese/sour cream tubs we go through, especially since the city doesn’t accept them for recycling. I’ve tried using them for leftovers, but because they’re not transparent, (and I’m not good about labeling them) they usually end up shoved to the back of the frig, where they slowly turn into toxic sledge. Now we’re actually in need of them to transplant our tomato starts. But the rest of the year, most of them end up getting tossed. I guess I’m especially sensitive to plastic usage these days having read more recently about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a Texas-size gyre or giant eddy of accumulated plastic in the Pacific Ocean. This guy is building a boat of recycled plastic, called Plastiki, to sail to the garbage patch to bring awareness of the problem of waste in our oceans. Meanwhile, Durango is waging its own battle against plastic through the Reusable Bag Challenge, in which ski towns around the West compete to show who can eliminate the most throw-away bag usage. The contest ends September 1.

Any way we can cut down on waste, especially through fun, “sneaky” reuses, sounds like a good idea to me. Any more suggestions?

MORE: In a letter to the editor in Monday’s paper, Janet Reichl, shares some interesting additional information about plastic and the garbage patch.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 10:23 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “A new twist on reduce, reuse, recycle”

  1. May 1st, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    Ms. Jaimie says:

    As a preschool teacher we are constantly reusing items that parents can’t imagine. Those small yogurt containers work great for seed starting, individual toothbrush cups or storage for paintbrushes etc…the bigger cottage cheese containers I used to make those upside down tomato plant growers…I simply pokes two holes near the top and fashioned a hanger, then cut a hole in the bottom, put the plant through the hole, filled it with dirt and hung it up near a window…now the kids can see the plant grow, it is up out of reach, and won’t get knocked over!
    Also any plastic container with the bottom cut off makes an awesome bubble blower that makes those really big bubbles.

  2. May 1st, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    Ms. Jaimie says:

    Sorry about the typo’s!

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