Saturday, May 30, 2009

It's Easy Being Green: When you can't recycle...

My last "It's Easy Being Green" post was about when you have the option to recycle or reuse. Of course, not everything can be recycled! Here are some creative reuses we've found for items that can't.
Most plastic bottles can be recycled, but most plastic bottle tops can't. Here is an orange juice top reused as a slug trap (with beer).
The handle on our lawn mower broke (bent) around the time the wood handle broke off a cultivator, so Scott attached the broken handle of the cultivator to the lawn mower handle and it's now good and stiff as new. Kept us from having to buy a new lawn mower handle and throw out the cultivator handle.
This isn't garden related, but rubber wine corks can be reused for a wreath commemorating a special occasion:
My mother-in-law made this one for me with rubber corks from our wedding, and had wedding guests sign them. Is that cute or what?!
How do you creatively reuse things that can't be recycled?

7 comments:

Gardeness said...

Love the mower. We turned ours in for a reel mower (our city is always advertising go-green deals). I reuse plastic bottles/jugs to place over tender seedlings when nights get too chilly. Paper egg cartons I use for stating seeds and just plunk each section in the garden when seedlings are ready to go outside. I also use those plastic containers that salad mix comes in (or sometimes takeout) to start seeds (or as a mini worm bin). The list is endless, isn't it?

Prairie Chicken... said...

awww snap! that cork wreath with signed corks from your wedding is brilliant! Your repurposed idea's are always great!
unrelated - have you ever seen the British tv program calling "it's not easy being green"? from BBC2?
If you haven't you should see if you can track it down somewhere. I think you'd really enjoy it. http://www.newhousefarm.tv/index=home

Catherine@AGardenerinProgress said...

All great ideas. I would never have thought of the lawn mower fix. I'm always saving things that I think I could reuse, but I don't usually remember to use them.
The cork idea is really fun idea.

Heather said...

Ginger- I love the wine wreath! What a great decoration and memory aide! Perfect~

Janet, The Queen of Seaford said...

very clever use of wine corks (or should we call them wine plastics?) especially from a special event!

Ginger said...

Gardeness- Great ideas! Would you believe that since I made this post, that terrible-looking lawn mower was stolen out of our yard??! I may have to try out a
reel mower now.

PC- I'll totally check it out. Thanks!

Catherine- I hate to throw things away, too. We could open a thrift shop around here - LOL :)

Heather- It wasn't my idea, but I love it!

Janet- Yeah, I guess I shouldn't call them "corks"!

Wicked Gardener said...

My mother in law has the same wreath!!!