Recycling tips: Why not?
 

I've done some thinking in the past few years.

Having lived in the country for most of my responsible life (past age 6), I'm pretty used to burning my garbage, rather than bagging it and having someone come pick it up and haul it away.

The point of stating that, was to state this: After thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that I can't think of a single thing - that will burn reasonably in my back yard firepit - that isn't EASILY recyclable.

Given that, I've decided that I should add some kind of helpful input to the community, both here and at large, so I've started this thread.

I'd like to see everything that everyone has done at home to help with recycling. Not the REDUCE part. Not the act of bagging/tying it up and sending it away with the rest of the recyclables.

I want to see how you're - WE'RE - all REUSING things in OUR households.

For instance:

1.) The large box of Kix (favorite cereal) measures nearly 10" x 12" w/h... the average sheet of legal paper is 8.5" x 11". Empty your box of Kix, cut it in half along it's depth, so you have two pieces that are both 10"x12"x~2" deep, and tape cover/decorate them as necessary.

Take them to the office with you, or place them in your home office, you've now created mail boxes.

Any cereal box can easily be cut and covered nicely to create anything ranging from a bookend (with weight) to a magazine holder.

2.) Drink coffee? Grow plants?
* 1tsp of used coffee grounds will act as fertilizer for many household plants, due to the nitrates and caffeine in the coffee grounds.
* Keep an old butter dish handy with some clean, rinsed coffee grounds in it. When you're especially greasy (from doing your EV swap), take a finger full of coffee grounds and some dish soap. Works like pumice, only cheaper.
* Put 1-2 OZ of used (dry) coffee grounds in an old sock. Place it in a closet to help ward off odd odors.

3.) Cleaned/dried/crushed eggshells make a great additive to create texture on some projects.

4.)The average prescription pill bottle holds ~$10 in quarters... which might come in handy some day. (Always remove the label from old pill bottles, even OTC pills.. someone might mistake whatever's in it for whatever the label says.)

5.)What do you do when you're done with the butter dish? Do you purchase plastic storage bowls? Think about it for a second, then get back to me. ;)

These are very small steps, but every little bit helps. Maybe you can think of something else?

I leave this thread up to you, my friends. Anything you can think of that might aid the effort!



There is only ONE condition:

Whatever you post here must be an opportunity to REUSE something that is normally considered "trash" by the general public.

Christ, thanks for starting this thread:)
My Mom has been holding quarters in a pill bottle for the last 15 years. And coffee grounds end up in our compost pile.
Geez, I'd like to add something new to your list, but for the last 10 years I've been trying to reuse so hard that it's second nature by now and I don't even think about it. I'll have to look at what I'm doing around the house and then I'll give examples.

Bean Can - Perfect desktop pen/pencil holder. --Thoroughly cleaned, covered with glued on fabric (old t-shirt/jeans)

cardboard bits - Christmas ornaments. -- help children design and cut out shapes, 2d or 3d, and hang them with paper clips or bits of string

CD's - Coaster/mirror <(--- long shot, but it works

Old vinyl records? Make festive chip bowls! (Preheat oven to ~230*F, place Pyrex* glass bowl in oven with vinyl record on top, add weight to middle of record, when it starts to sink, take the whole thing out of the oven, and press on the weight, forming the sides however you please.)

Anyone have an idea to reuse cigarette butts?
.....I was thinking bleach them, spread them out, frame them in mesh. (makes a very effective air filter for induction applications)

Solid bits of otherwise tattered clothing - patches or patchwork -- Sew a Patchwork quilt from your old jeans/shirts/sweaters, etc... stay warm in the winter with less strain on your heating system!

More to come!

Don't smoke! It causes unnecessary air pollution.

Not exactly re-using trash, but I often repair things that most people would throw away. A needle and thread can save many things from the landfill. I repaired my bike saddle bag this way, re-attached the faux leather palm that was falling off a pair of mittens, sewed velcro on a laundry bag back into place. JB Weld has rescued several items, including both my sideview mirrors. I also just noticed that my pen jar is actually a box from a printer cartridge, I've had it forever and never really thought about it.

I actually quit 3 months or so ago (lost track of exactly how long, cuz I don't care enough to count, i don't consider it a great achievement, even after having smoked for over 10 years.)

Fact is, there are still 1000's of cigarette butts a day, even in your town, being tossed. What can we do with them?

I recently bought a house and moved in to it with two roommates, our house warming party produced a few handfuls of trash, a tin garbage can 3/4 full of glass bottles and about 8 aluminum cans from the 50 or so guests, we did have to wash a counter full of glass caning jars that had been used to drink out of but over all it was a very clean party.
We've also noticed that we can fill up the compost bucket in about a day and a half and it takes over a week to fill up the 10 gallon garbage can with trash and almost twice as long to fill up the recycling bin of the same size.
Coffee is bought in bulk so we can fill up the jar instead of ending up with a pile of coffee cans or bags, do the same with alot of other foods as well so the trash never enters the house in the first place.
wast paper is torn in to smaller sheets to be used as shopping lists and notes.

Here is a creative endevour for the recycling buffs ... why not make confetti from you paper waste. Like old bills, junk mail etc. Rebag it in oversized chip bags or just about any other cleaned out plastic bag and re sell it on E-bay or craigslist.

I mean, where does confetti really come from? Why not make your own and re sell it. The packaging is irrelevant and once the public realizes how its made you could be an eco-hero.

I like that idea trikkonceptz! I can see a few potential issues, but that would be for the entrepreneur to work out...

I'm rather disappointed that this thread hasn't had more replies though... I thought alot more people re-used things in their daily lives.

I'd love to see some creative ideas on how to re-use things that would otherwise be wasted, especially with the holidays coming so quickly...

What can we re-use the wrapping paper for?

What about product packaging? Has anyone ever used vacuum formed plastic packaging for a craft?

C'MON PEOPLE! Even if it's something we won't all do, SOMEONE ELSE in the world might read this, and be able to do it!

I remember in Middle School - Junior High.

Home Ec class. The year's project was a Locker Caddy. We took an old pair of jeans, cut sections out of them, and sewed them together to make a locker caddy that had pockets in it, to help organize our lockers. Later, these were reused in my home to organize mail, hold the remotes on the side of the couch (dad's side, of course... :rolleyes: ).

Formula413 - I also try to fix stuff as often as I can, not so much with sewing and such, but I'd rather fix or part something than junk it, any day.

I wonder how many people realize what recycling through a service actually costs? It's certainly cheaper by all accounts for all parties involved to fix or reuse things as much as you can, as often as you can.

Wrapping next year's gifts, of course. Take it off neatly, instead of madly tearing into things, then fold it up & stick it in the box or wherever you store decorations & stuff.

LOL My grandma used to take the wrapping paper off her gifts by cutting the tape with a letter opener, then un-folding it.

I got her one year, by wrapping her gift box in duct tape. :thumbup:

What do you do with the gift wrap that your young children open? Obviously, they're not as neat about it as we might be. ;)

As in Ryland's case, I also use the backside of random pieces of paper for shopping lists, notes, diagrams when doing a small renovation. Here in Warsaw, for the last few years wrapping gifts has become less and less popular. People prefer to use paper bags. Of course, not the kind you find in US supermarkets, but nice decorative thick walled bags with string handles. A lot of people use them because it's easier to put something in a bag than to wrap it in paper, we use them because after taking the present out they're like new. We use them for any occasion: X-mas, birthday, nameday, party gifts, etc., and always put the namecard on the handle, so it can be torn off and the bag reused. I hate it when someone writes on the bag with a marker!

Looking around the house yesterday I saw that we use an old plastic container instead of a scoop for the dogfood. We use a 5yo 1.5 liter bottle for watering plants. We have a 15cm cube of styrofoam under the washer to keep it lifted when we need access. I'm using disposable chop-sticks for three years now. We have a whole bowl of rubberbands and twist ties from packaging. We have at least three chipped mugs which are now pen holders. We buy a lot of food at the farmer's market, where there is less packaging, plus we bring our own bags and egg boxes, further reducing trash. Tin boxes from cookies and candies are now the homes of sewing needles and thread, safety pins, screws, nails, etc. After remodelling the kitchen we had a lot of cabinets to dispose of, the sides of which are now shelves in the basement.
Since I often have to eat lunch in town, and I don't always have time to sit down at a restaurant with real utensiles, so I carry a fork in my backpack. A few months ago I didn't have that fork with me and had to use a plastic one. It hurt. Real bad. But then I noticed that I can lick it just as clean as the steel one, so now the plastic fork lives in my other backpack. Thanks to both of them I've saved about 30-40 plastic forks from the landfill. Similar situation when I go to donate blood: they used to give water in 0.33 liter bottles, but thankfully recently switched to reusable 20 liter jugs. Unfortunately, you drink from it with disposable cups, some people using 2 cups at a time (one before, one after donating). I bring my own cup (with a vampire on it - the nurses just love it :) ).

But there is only a certain amount of trash you can reuse - you only need 2-3 penholders for years at a time, but you produce trash continuosly. And today there is more and more packaging, so reducing is becoming harder (unless you start organicly growing your own food and stop buying your children presents). Reusing is better than recycling, and there is a company which collects packaging and reuses it without going through the whole recycling process. The company is TerraCycle.

You're wholly correct in that you only need sooo many pen holders for your life, but at the same time, that's 2-3 less items that end up being "misplaced" in the trash, and 2-3 items that don't require the special "processing" that most recycling firms offer!

The more we can "recycle" without corporate interference, the better it is for us, in that if everyone saved that 2-3 coffee mugs, (which might be the only 2-3 coffee mugs they throw away in their life, if they're like my dad... :rolleyes: ) and found another use for them, that would be between 800 million and 1.2 billion Coffee mugs (per generation, in America, with 400 million people tossing out 2-3 mugs) that didn't end up having to be "processed" before they could be reused as a filler for some aggregate company.

Sadly, most people just figure that recycling through the local firm is enough to appease some higher eco-force, so that they won't be bothered in daily life to actually think of ways to help the environment on their own. It's become another autonomic response to something that could otherwise be considered a "hassle" to daily life.

Some of us, like (seemingly) everyone that has or will post in this thread, already DO reuse a lot of things in our lives, maybe without even realizing it! There are times when something becomes so commonplace to us, that we just "let it go" as though it's not a big deal, even though it really is!

By the way, thanks for that link, I've bookmarked it, and will research it later.

I slice used bicycle inner tubes and use them for handlebar wrap. A worn out tire tread can be cut up to use as insulators around bolts to cut vibration. All of my bike lights use rechargeable batteries.

Larger scraps of wood, drywall, etc. are kept around for small-- and usually unexpected projects. Drill bits are resharpened instead of tossed. Two 50 gal drums collect rain water for my wife's garden.

At my house we try to keep food out of plastic, some things like yogert comes in quart plastic containers and we do reuse those for left overs, scoops for salt and sand for the sidewalk and for other small storage needs.
Milk and cream come in returnable glass that goes back to the store for a $1.50 deposit, eggs come in cartons that go back to my parents in exchange for more eggs, dry goods like beans, rice, coffee, cereal all are in bulk at the store so we just refill the glass jar, in remodeling the plaster is used as fill, nails are kept to to sell with other scrap steel, wood is either reused or burnt in bon fires or to heat my parents house, I pass the waste transfer drop off on my way to work and with and with 3 of us filling a bag of trash every few weeks i just drop it off as I drive to work.

My mom has been washing out ziploc bags for as long as I can remember. Also, food leftovers go in old yogurt containers, or butter tubs, or whatnot.

See? We all re-use stuff somewhere in our lives...

Granted, the best way to reduce trash as a whole is to not introduce it to begin with, but it's not always possible. Re-using as much as we can in our daily lives is the next best way to save a little bit of money and help out the eco-system at the same time.

Does anyone take their plastic grocery bags back to the store?

I often shop at Aldi, where I dont use plastic at all. I end up helping the store get rid of cardboard boxes, which I then use for mock-ups and such, or donate to people moving, occasionally, during warmer months, I'll use some to start a fire out doors to sit by.

In the event that I come across something that is un-fixable (at least by me), I dont just toss it. I usually take whatever I can use for something else from it, then separate the basic components, like metals, plastics, etc. So they can be recycled rather than tossed out.

I feel as you do.
 

In an effort to cut back on paper towel usage, we use an absorber.

Funny story, one day I was walking into the house and the wife dropped a cup of water right off the counter. I had just finished washing the car and had the absorber in my hand, of course I quickly cleaned up the mess and Viola .... the absorber became the quicker picker upper .. lol

I have noticed that we use 1/3 less towels now because of it. Hell it dries, is washable, then dries again, quickly. We've used it to dry the dog, our selves ... on seperate ocassions of course.

So while its not exactly recycling its using one product in place of another that gets thrown out ..

I like the absorber idea
 

K, I'll allow it!

I got to thinking tonite/day, since shultz up there said of candles...

Ya know those glass candle thingies that people buy? The ones that are almost always 6-8 fl oz capacity? Yeah.. you know the ones... people throw those away. It actually bothers me how many of those I used to see in trash and recycle bins, and then see the same people going to the store to buy a whole new set of dishes because they broke a glass... when they could easily clean those spent candles from the glass, and use THE CANDLE HOLDER!

I've actually got a set of Vodka glasses in storage (shhhh don't tell my friends) that came from 8 flavors of scented candles. They are the perfect size to hold 2 rocks (ice) and a good slug of liquor on a cold night with friends.

My wife pretty much only drinks water or juice, and goes to school 4 days a week, so she takes water bottles with her.

I still purchase new bottles for her, just for the sake that our water here sucks, but when she's home, she'll just refill the day's bottle and drink it.

Also, at times, her step dad brings home 5 gallon bottles of water from work (he works for Unilever/Exel). We fill smaller bottles from it (re-used juice bottles) and store them in the fridge to drink on a daily basis. We use sink water to wash and etc.

Paper towels - Has anyone considered using the "sham-wow"? I've not gotten the chance to buy one yet, though I would love to test them personally. Even if they're not as good as they say, it's still an OK deal for a set of re-usable shop towels.

Aside that, I usually have messes to clean up that are bigger than one PT can handle... I buy towels that I can rinse out and re-use.. and I get them from the parts store. They're blue, and you can actually wash them in the washer (as long as you haven't used them on dangerous chemicals.)

I guess they're just called "Shop Towels" but they're usually less than $3/roll. They actually saved me money, since I don't use nearly as many of them, and they're multi-use. I buy them about 2-3 times a year, rather than spending $2/roll for towels once every week or two.

Don't have young children myself, though I have friends who do. I think the worst are my neighbors' grandkids: with indulgent grandparents and divorced parents vying to buy the kiddies affection, they get an unimaginable (to me, anyway) amount of stuff - and have more fun playing with the wrapping paper & boxes than with any of the toys.

I refill the plastic water bottles too. I'm lucky enough to have a well with really good water, but even when I've spent time elsewhere, a water filter (I think Brita is the brand name?) takes out most of the urban water taste - and most bottled water is just filtered, anyway. Also the larger 1-2 quart plastic bottles are great for hiking & long bike trips: since empty ones weigh almost nothing, you're not packing around excess weight.

If you have a self heating dishwasher you can clean those candle jars out pretty easy.
After you have used up the candle
Use a butter knife to scrape as much wax out as possible then throw hem in the dishwasher with your pots and pans.
The really hot water that my dishwasher uses on the pots-n-pans cycle is hot enough to melt ant leftover wax and then it gets dissolved in the grease cutting soap and gone.
Before someone tells me how dangerous that is for the plumbing, let me say, I have been doing this for fifteen years and have not clogged a pipe yet. (jinx)
Then you can use them for juice in the morning, or whatever.
If your 8 year old has a sleep-over you need ten disposable (read breakable and i don't care) juice glasses. So these fill the bill perfectly.
S.

I always had great Christmas bounties when I was young enough to care.. once we moved the last time, myself and my father as a family, and after my Grandmother died, we've pretty much been less-than middle class... and couldn't afford it anymore, so I quickly forgot about it.

Now, at 23, I don't even really celebrate Christmas like most others do. I just see it as a day to visit family, have a few drinks, relax, and get fatter.

I can honestly say though, for the most part, unwrapping the gifts was more fun than the gifts themselves. Moreso, was watching my dad and grandma fighting over how to assemble something.

Beyond that, was watching them give up, and I would go finish it, by reading the directions... a skill that most adults tend to forget.

Now yer talkin! A man after me own heart. I love tackling the salvage/repair/refurbishment of stuff that others have given up on. Not that I can't afford to buy truckloads of new crap like everybody else...I can, but I like the challenge, I like keeping good stuff out of landfills, I'm cheap... I guess I'm old school too.

It never ceases to amaze me what people throw away! My latest success story is a DVD player I found in a dumpster. Grabbed it, played with it, went online to find troubleshooting instructions, fixed it quickly and easily without buying a thing! Only "bad" thing is, I don't have the remote for it. Oh well... it is identical to the one I'd already bought and the remote works on both of em. I bet if I keep my nose to the ground, an appropriate remote will turn up sooner or later. Also found one of those "atomic clocks" in a dumpster and snagged that. Cleaned it up, put a new battery in, programmed it... works perfectly! A $27 clock for the price of a battery! Why was it thrown out in the first place? Someone was too stupid to replace the battery or program it I suppose. :rolleyes: (Sidenote: My bicycle computer button cell battery finally died after many years. Went to WalMart and the usual places to see what they had for batteries... over $4 for one?!? :eek: Sure- I could have bought that... but I thought, how stupid! Ended up at the Dollar Store on the way home and get this- 8-packs of button cell batteries for $1!!! :eek: Got home and was amazed at all the stuff I had that needed those batteries once I started thinking about it- my digital calipers with the weak display, quite a number of calculators, mine and other people's, and so on. Only two batteries left now and I'm sure they won't go to waste.)

I now have three full-suspension mountain bikes, one has an aluminum frame. Two were junked and one came from Freecycle. I have all of them all fixed up. One has new tires gotten from barter. One has new cables that I already had laying around. That is the sum total of new parts it took to fix em up, the rest of the stuff I already had or I went out and bartered for. All three are now in perfect working order except I need to get 1 pair of brake shoes. Why were they in the junk??? :confused:

A cheapie fanatic? Yes, and proud of it. I haven't bought paper towels or napkins in years. Why, when they are there for the taking? Seems when I go out to eat with others, for some reason most of them grab a huge handful of napkins- why? Are they planning on eating like Cookie Monster? Seems like one is always enough for me? :confused: So when we're done and that stack of napkins is still sitting there, I pocket it. Got as much as I could ever want and then some for the cars, shop, and home.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...dSTSES0012.jpg


Made window plugs from styrofoam sheet, for winter. Yeah, styrofoam is cheap... but why buy it at all when they toss it out en masse at furniture stores? I got all I want for free- just go down there and ask for it.

Oh, I could go on and on, more than I already have. Bottom line is, I hardly ever go shopping for new stuff and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. There ain't much that goes from me > landfill.

I would expect no less from a person w/ that avatar! LOL

In all Honesty, I actually got my loveseat ($400$ new) and ottoman ($600$ new) which, ironically, almost perfectly match each other, free. How, you might ask?

I used to walk out back of a Rent-A-Center when I worked at IBM Endicott (EIT, Inc.).

I spotted them, and called a friend to help carry them the 5 blocks from there to my apartment, without mentioning anything to my wife... she was more than surprised to find out that I was bringing home a paycheck AND $1000 worth of nearly new furniture.

I scored a LCD computer monitor that wouldn't turn on as soon as you hit the power button.. it took a few seconds.

Tables, chairs, etc. all free, all from "Trash".

My wife and I used to take walks on Tuesday nights, when everyone put their trash out. I can't count the amount of money I've made from selling trash, or the parts I've gotten from one thing that might be useful for something else. Almost a year of it, and only one confrontation, which ended up with the cops involved, laughing at the crazy man who called them over a garbage picker.

In some cities, they actually applaud those of us who use the things that others waste, since it keeps it out of the landfill, keeps the garbage from getting strewn about, etc.

Ironically, for the first time in my life, the cops were on MY SIDE... It felt strange.

Yeah- I got tables, lamps, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, tools, oh fer cripes sakes, just about anything you could think of from the "trash". Land of Plenty indeed!

HA! You just reminded me of a guy I know in this area... He used to pick up furniture that people threw out... and then sell it back to them, after "cleaning it up".

Goes to show exactly how persnickety some people can be... you can sell them back their own furniture, and most times, there wasn't anything wrong with it when they threw it out!

The one guy in NY that I had a problem with, he ended up being pissed because I saw value in something that he didn't. He knew, with some amount of certainty, that I would make value of his old computer, and probably end up selling it. I confirmed his belief when I answered the officer's: "What are you going to do with it?" with: "Rebuild it, a little better, and sell it for a little bit of nothing, so some kid can do his homework.. And I'm going to do it with more parts I got, probably, from this guy."

He was a little enraged by the idea that he also built computers, and found no value in something so "obsolete", but that I was willing to build garbage, with garbage, and sell it.

Other than that, I've gotten freecycle stuff, etc. as well.. I've actually used paper mache to fix stuff too... or broken glass from a liquor bottle, when something is "missing" a piece of thick glass.. The stuff is really easy to shape, if you can break out a piece that's close, you can file it down to fit.

When I used to do alot of case mods to computers and game systems, most of my acrylic sheets came from waste piles behind stores like lowes and home depot. Some of it came from people who had small pets that died, and threw out the plastic cage it was in.

In small projects, I almost never pay for material. I won't begin to fathom how much money I've saved by re-using stuff that most would consider "garbage".

My Mom has been doing that ever since she noticed Kroger accepts them. But she doesn't have too many, as there are always 4-5 reusable cloth bags in her trunk.

My brother-in-law's friend ordered a printer, but it didn't work, so he called the company. They sent him a new one and didn't want the old one back. So my brother-in-law took the busted one. It didn't work because a piece of packaging styrofoam was blocking the carriage. He took it out and now has a new printer/scanner/copier.

Back to bottles: I use my bike bottles, I've been intensively using all four for 15 years now. When my Wife and I go swimming, wall climbing or play squash, we take two of them, about 1.5 liters of water total. I read an article in E magazine about bottled water and that just made me glad I drink tap. My wife says she doesn't like its taste, so for her I buy water in the largest jugs (6 liters) I can find.

Another reuse project I did was a thermos cover. It is a two layer sleeve with a hood, the inner layer is out of fleece scraps to keep in heat, the outer layer is from a rainproof coat. It cost about $10 for a tailor to do it, now the thermos is warm even when we hike in the winter:) In fact, it's so good that we had a second one made, and a third and fourth for our friends. Now we need more scraps.

I can understand most of that. It's gotten so that I hate to have to make a trip to the local landfill, 'cause I always want to come home with more stuff than I brought.

So far, I'm enjoying the goings-on of this thread...

As far as the grocery bags go - Some grocery stores will give you a break on your purchases if you take the used bags back... something like .02 for each bag.. it's not much, but when you buy groceries like I do, in $200-$300 spats, and it takes 40-50 bags to bag it all up, there's a dollar. :P Doesn't seem like much, only about $1 a month... $12 a year... but at current gas prices, that's a free fill-up a year for my Civic!

That was back when we shopped at a local PriceChopper in NY state.

Old CD's can be hole-punched and hung up to keep birds off your cars/crops.

My grandfather built "e-brake caddies" for his Hondas out of scrap wood and tin cans. He built them to straddle the e-brake when it was down, and then attached two sizes of tin cans to the top (one notched for a coffee cup handle) and attached an oblong cocoa tin in the center to hold pens, garage door opener, etc. The entire thing was covered in carpet that matched the floors (he got scraps from an upholstery shop.) Very convenient back when cars didn't come with cupholders.

I'm not mechanically inclined enough to fix some things, so I offer them on Freecycle as "needs work." There is ALWAYS somebody like Frank Lee who will pick them up and repair them, keeping them out of the landfill.

Kinda off-topic, but my employer is about to scrap a bunch of old broken computers (anything from K6/450 to P4-1.8GHz.) I'd like to make working machines out of them and donate them. Does anybody know of a charity, either local to SoCal or nationwide, that can distribute these? I have a skill; might as well use it for good. (I'd also pick up all computers I can off Freecycle and fix them up similarly.)

Fixing and donation qualify as re-using, in my book... so I'll humor this one.

Churches are often looking for donations of the sort, to keep up with at least the trailing edge of technology.

Often times, brothers and sisters clubs are in need, as well. Many times, they can't afford the computers that might otherwise be given to them.

Several community schools might also accept such a donation, provided the systems are "cleanable"... i.e. no software installed.

The nice thing about freecycle in large areas is that it reaches so widely over the population, even through hear-say and WOM. Also, you can easily pick and choose who you give something to. A few emails back and forth will usually pretty easily determine who will make the most of such a gift.

Around this time of year, it might even be nice to get a list of needy families from a local church, and donate a computer directly to them, no thanks necessary. I don't know about your area, but in rural areas, most churches will gladly give the names of those who haven't asked that it not be done, and this makes it easy for someone to "Secret Santa" a gift to a family who otherwise could not afford such a thing.

As far as the cupholders in the Honda, I've considered doing that several times.. but there are more OEM appearing ways to do it, if you have the patience and skill to make them fit. One such way is the DIN slot cup holder on the ford taurii of the age... they fit perfectly where the radio went in hondas, and the average honda has a cubby-slot that can be cut out to accommodate them as well. Another option is the center console from some newer Integras (90+) that have cupholders in them. Also, many have just taken window-mount ashtrays, made cupholders from them, and mounted them to a section of trim that would overhang in front of the passenger seat, which, amazingly, doesn't interfere with passenger legroom, for the most part.

Almost all my furniture came from cheap stores that would throw out broken returns....the recliners, loveseats, and sofas had cheap, thin wood frames that would break easily. I would pull off the dust covers and put a couple of wood slats on each side of the breaks and use a few bolts to hold them together...never had a fixed one break on me, barely used for free.

When I open my mail I use paper that has no printing on the back side for everything that I use my printer for that I want to keep.

The envelopes that have no print on the backside are used for note paper.

I have been reusing throw away plastic plates forever, along with large size McDonald cups. Refilling water bottles is a no brainer.

When I was an active mailman with a rte of 44 miles I would get all kinds of free stuff that people set out. I'd come by after work and pick it up, then on my days off set it out front with a very low priced sign and it'd be sold in a few minutes.

One guy took 11 adult bikes that he didn't want to mess with due to various problems. For less than $20 I had them all in perfect riding order and would take one per event to the drag strip and sell them for $20-$50....11 bikes, 11 races....paid for my entry fee on average.

Had a 2.5 Chrysler minivan motor with 235,000 miles on it given me. The guy was a rural router and had pulled it out to replace with a newer one as a preventive measure. It was put in a car that I race as is and won the Dodge SRT Nationals with it a couple of months later. My car has 267,000 miles on it and only sees used stuff put on. The motor used 1 qt of oil every 2000 miles (nice, since that's my change interval) and I just had it freshened up with used Ford wrist pins (.912 compared to .9), timing belt, valve job, valve guides, and valve seals.

See - even cars can benefit from re-using things!

Junkyard slogan in this area: "We know our parts work - They're used."

Or one from up my way: "Everyone drives on used parts"

yep, I've seen that one too! One of my old employers used it.

When people complained about prices for parts, he'd ask them "What will you take for your car?" and they'd give some stupid price, like $1000 or something, to which he'd reply "But! It's used!!!"

They usually got the hint.

I have boxes of cords from just about everything, wall warts, RCA cables power strips, all those cords that come with things like DVD players that you only need one of the 3 that came with it, but sooner or later someone needs it and if they do get to be outdated then you recycle them and cash in on the coper in them, same with lamp cords.
I did finely take my trash out and realized that the reason it was so full was from a month and a half ago, we sanded our wood floors and the trash can was half full of used sand paper... from over a month ago.
we have a water filter deal that sits on a shelf with a spigot on the side, fill it from the tap then fill your glass from the spigot, we don't have a single plastic water bottle in the house or the recycling, instead they are all stainless steel and should last the rest of my life, travel mugs are also stainless steel inside, the local coffee shops all give a discount if you bring your own mug as paper cups cost them money and are tacky.