Cambridge, NY, in the beautiful foothills of the Green Mountains.
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42
recycling/reusing
I would like to see postings about recycling and reusing various items. For example, I found a large old metal chicken feeder, and by hanging it upside down from the kitchen ceiling and adding "s" hooks, I have a great pot rack. We all need to save money and the earth. I know everyone has great ideas!! Keep them coming. <font color="red"> </font color> [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]
We got new windows in our house and built the chicken coop so that three of the old ones could be incorporated.
I also stash every scrap of waste metal (aluminum, steel-including nails, copper, lead) and haul it to the scrap yard when I have a trcukload. Not worth much, but like free money and keeps it out of the landfills.
I know I've done many other things, but just cannot think of them right now...
I think the best thing anyone can do to reduce waste, is to watch what you buy and consume in the first place...while its all nice to neatly stack all your newspapers and put them in the appropriate bin, are you really reading all of them in the first place? (I subscrivbe to no print periodicals and read everthing I want on line...usually for free, but certainly for less than print versions)..and I don't need to recycle them.
Same goes for a lot of other things..buy smart in the first place and you will have less to recycle when you use it up. You would be suprised how much of the stuff that you have bothered to wash and seperate from your trash simply ends up in the landfill anyway...there is WAY more recycled material available than demand for that material...and, like I said, I have read plenty or articles of where entire dumpsters of recyclable stuff is just dumped into the landfill because there was either no place to store it or no one that wanted it...
I do recycle the obvious stuff, but I refuse to wash out anything to be recycle (i.e. a spagetti jar goes directly in the trash). No way I am going to use perfectly good well water, oil from the furnance and add waste to my septic system in order to clean something that has a good chance of being trashed anyway...even if I knew it would actually be recycled, I am not sure wasting water, heat and adding to the septic system so that the glass can be recycled is really the best use of resources. [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]
I think a lot of recycling efforts are well-intentioned, but fall short in execution...the most boneheaded example was when a town about 12 miles from me specified that its new bike trail (that it was putting out to bid) needed to use recycled glass in the paving material...so guess where all those all beer bottles went??? Know how many flats people started getting? [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]
We were at an auction and my wife was poking around in the barn. She found a chicken coop. It was not very ordinary as it had spent the first part of its life as a china cabinet. It was painted white and had a lot of decorations from the chickens.
To make a long story a little shorter she bought it and we spent the time to wash, strip and refinish it. It needed all new glass and new hinges. It turned out that it is a dark walnut wood and it finished up very well.
I have attached a picture of it in our living room.
Here's a few:
- reuse plastic grocery bags as garbage bags.
- used conduit as tree stakes and berry trellises
- use old patio doors as coldframe covers.
- wood mulch from town highway department - many towns have a chipper for tree trimmings. The woodchips aren't as pretty as the storebought ones, but they work. I get it by the pick up truck load and use it for mulching berries and other plants.
- leaves for compost. At my last home, the town would deliver several dumptruck loads of leaves to me each fall. I would sheet compost some in the garden and put the balance in compost bins for use in the garden after a year or so. This is a real cheap way to add fertility and organic matter to your garden soil.
- manure for your garden. It is easy to find people, especially horseowners who are happy to have you haul away their manure and straw bedding from the stalls. It can be tilled in right away or put it in the compost bin and compost it. It is an excellent soil amendment and cheaper than compost from the garden supply center.
- check out auctions and second hand shops. You can get real good buys on furnishings, household items and tools if you're willing to look and have some patience. As an example, for $1 I picked up a 20" Hitachi TV earlier this summer at an auction.
- and here's one which is a little different - toys from the transfer station. My 11 yr old likes to tinker and has picked up toolboxes, typewriters, a roto-tiller, fans and all sorts of electrical and mechanical stuff usually in good condition at the transfer station. He'll work on it for a while and if he can make it work great, if he can't it goes back and he has had fun and learned a lot about how things work.
<font color="purple"> I have attached a picture of it in our living room </font color>
Neat bit of recycling, Tim, and a beautiful Queen Anne piece of furniture; hard to even imagine it as a chicken coop. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
You make an excellent point with "watch what you buy". I am by no means as hard-core as a lot of "homesteaders" out there, but I cannot believe some of the stuff companies are developing nowadays. Swifters, etc especially. Let's just throw more and more into the landfills. Even my wife sees no great advantage to these "use once and throw away" household items. Don't people use rags anymore? Are they afraid to get their hands wet? Jeez...
On recycling bottles, etc: More states should implement what Michigan and others have. $0.10 each. I would gladly pay a little more to ensure that these things get recycled. AND pick up everyone else's roadside trash to my benefit. I know this doesn't mean that they get recycled either, but if the entire system is in place and cash is being put out, it's hard to believe that everything that gets turned in wouldn't get recycled...
That is one nice thing about Michigan. With the $.10 deposit you never see them laying around. There is always somebody the will pick them up (myself included).
I find that it is always worth taking a minute to look at what others are throwing away to see if you can use it. In our town we have a transfer station for waste disposal - 1 dumpster for garbage, 1 for building waste, old furniture, etc..., one for scrap metal and three for recycling.
This weekend's trip to the transfer station netted me 2 lengths of hose, one good nozzle for the hose and a workbench vise. All in all a good 15 minutes.
What made it truly amazing to me was that the workbench vise is an Emmert patternmakers vise. This vise is a collectors item, is written up in woodworking magazines as one of the best vises ever made and something I never dreamed I would be able to get for my woodshop.
The old saw, "one mans trash is another's treasure" is really true.
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