Reuse vs Recycle

Recycling is great for the environment, keeping materials out of land fills and supplying manufacturers with a high grade of starting material. It costs most companies less energy to make a product out of recycled material then having to start with standard raw materials. This is good but if you reuse an item that keeps the material out of the landfill and costs zero energy. So think Reuse then Recycle. There are several online communities dedicated to this concept. They allow people to trade or give away stuff that they would normally throw away or just have cluttering up their house:

freecycle
Craigs List(post or search under the for Free category)

This concept can not only be applied at home but also in the office. At work we started a program of saving all the packing material that gets shipped to us. Packing peanuts, Bubble wrap, Air bags.... We then use these materials to pack and ship our own products. Shortly after this program was put into place we where able to stop ordering packing supplies. Not only did this program greatly reduce our trash it also saved us money. That's Green and Cash Green.

Simple Reusing Ideas:

With the great success of this program at work I applied it to my person life. My wife and I shop online a fair amount. Both for connivance and price. The down side to this is it generates a large amount of cardboard box and packing material waste. I started saving the boxes and packing material in my attic. Now when we need to ship something or box up a present we go upstairs to our own little shipping center. This takes almost no effort to do and saves you money.

Putting in a little more effort:

We put new counter tops in our kitchen last year. The old ones where warn out but still provided a nice flat surface. I kept the in the garage figuring I could come up with some project for them. Recently I started to convert one of the pieces into a new desk for my home office. I even got some left over paint off of "free Craigs list" to paint it.


Do you have a story or idea about reusing something? Leave a note in the comments and share your ideas!!