A-ha! I stopped a co-worker from throwing out a plastic produce bag, and she thanked me. I'm taking the bag home to recycle.
We're starting a "Go Green" initiative at work to reduce, reuse and recycle. My assigment is to educate co-workers on reducing unnecessary printouts to save paper and printer ink; and I'll be the official recycler of cardboard products if people don't want to take them home (excluding corrugated boxes, like printer paper and shipping boxes, since we already recycle those). I see so much cardboard in the kitchen trash and take it out -- I think most people aren't aware of how much they can recycle.
Showing posts with label recycling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recycling. Show all posts
Friday, March 7, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
kate's reuse-it tip no. 1
What to do with those plastic left-over "doggie bag" containers.
It's nice to see more and more restaurants providing plastic doggie-bag containers, in favor of styrofoam ones. But they aren't recyclable. So instead of throwing them away after eating leftovers, I discovered a great way to consolidate dry goods in the pantry using the containers.
I had all these half-empty produce bags of nuts and dried fruits in the pantry, taking up space and making it hard to find the item I needed in a sea of plastic bags. So I washed the doggie-bag containers and emptied the half-empty bags of similar foods into the containers. I put the loose dried fruit -- cherries, cranberries, blueberries -- into one container; small Ziploc bags of separated nuts -- almonds, sunflower seeds, pecans -- in another; and loose raisins in a third. The containers have air-tight lids, so everything should stay fresh. (Besides, does dried fruit really go bad?)
And Doug made a good point -- you could even mix and match to make trail mix!
Now I have three storage containers of dried snacks in the pantry, I can find exactly what I need right away, and there's less clutter on the shelf. And the plastic bags the snacks were packaged in went in the plastic-bag recycling, since plastic produce bags and zipper bags (with the zip top removed) can be recycled in the bin at the grocery store.
Plus, I saved myself some guilt in not having created excess trash. I threw away two small fruit bags (with aluminum on the inside) and one zip top from a zippered bag.
It's nice to see more and more restaurants providing plastic doggie-bag containers, in favor of styrofoam ones. But they aren't recyclable. So instead of throwing them away after eating leftovers, I discovered a great way to consolidate dry goods in the pantry using the containers.
I had all these half-empty produce bags of nuts and dried fruits in the pantry, taking up space and making it hard to find the item I needed in a sea of plastic bags. So I washed the doggie-bag containers and emptied the half-empty bags of similar foods into the containers. I put the loose dried fruit -- cherries, cranberries, blueberries -- into one container; small Ziploc bags of separated nuts -- almonds, sunflower seeds, pecans -- in another; and loose raisins in a third. The containers have air-tight lids, so everything should stay fresh. (Besides, does dried fruit really go bad?)
And Doug made a good point -- you could even mix and match to make trail mix!
Now I have three storage containers of dried snacks in the pantry, I can find exactly what I need right away, and there's less clutter on the shelf. And the plastic bags the snacks were packaged in went in the plastic-bag recycling, since plastic produce bags and zipper bags (with the zip top removed) can be recycled in the bin at the grocery store.
Plus, I saved myself some guilt in not having created excess trash. I threw away two small fruit bags (with aluminum on the inside) and one zip top from a zippered bag.
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