Recycle, Re-use, Reduce and more

Broccoli...................... Bok Choy

Snowpeas

Possibly a lemon?............. Ruby Grapefruit ............ The old Lemons

Dill ................Esky Potatoes & Mint................. Timber Clothes-horse

I was spurred on this week to think about the idea of re-using things to avoid purchasing un-neccessarily, especially purchasing plastic or un-natural items. So this weekend I have successfully

• given rogue dill plants a second life and saved them from their self sown location which put them at risk of the lawn mower... and I've potted them into old yoghurt tubs. I already have one beautiful dill plant which is ample sufficient for this household, so maybe I'll find these good homes.
• continued on my renovation project of rescuing the wooded clothes horse. We procured it from a church auction about 17 yrs ago - then it was wobbly. Recently the (probably lead based) paint started leaving marks on our wet clothes. Instead of replacing it with a plastic coated wire rack, I'm patiently hand sanding and will give it a natural coat of wax.
• prolonged the life of 4 pairs of shoes by cleaning and polishing the leather. I'm usually very bad at this, but (for at least one pair) it was either look good or go out. I'll get another year out of those boots.
• I've also re-used esky's in the garden - seen here I have potatoes in a red esky, and mint enjoying the old metal esky.
  

Further to my re-use activities, I've been having conversations about the use of plastic shopping bags. There are moves to make it illegal for grocery stores to use these anymore - and people are worrying about what they will use in the kitchen rubbish bins now. So here are some of my thoughts so far:

• put your kitchen food wastes into the compost bin - this reduces the amount of wet stuff that needs to go in the rubbish
• put all possible recycling in the recycling bin - we have a large wicker basket at the backdoor to collect the weekly recycling in and then we empty that into the recycling bin on weekends
• I think there are possibly 2 forms of rubbish then left for the bin - one is what I would call dry - ie the plastic bags off food products that aren't usually recyclable, and the other is smelly stuff - like the plastic wrap off some food items and meat trays.
  
• Dry stuff - either just throw it in loose - but if you dont like to do this, wrap it up in newspaper or ....
• For stuff that needs to go in a bag - look at what bags you do already buy - like the potatoes, the tomatoes, the toilet paper sometimes comes in a big plastic wrap, nappies, dog/cat food, cereal, rice, pasta etc....
  

I challenge you to try it - I'm trying the cereal plastic bag in the bathroom bin, and a dog food bag in the kitchen this week. And, if you need to know how to close it off when done - recycle the rubber bands on the junk mail!