Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose

Here is the pile of recyclable metal I'd been saving for several months.  Everything from bent nails, rusty screws to old rabbit cages.  Once I had a large enough load, I reached out to a local Facebook guy who picks this stuff up for free.  He came out within a couple days of me calling him and wha-la, all gone.  Well, all but the orange wheelbarrow.

 

Oh What A Relief It Is!

We finally bit the bullet and hired a contractor to replace our front stairs, walkway and driveway retaining wall.  In the process, and since the contractor had heavy equipment on site, we took advantage and had them pull out and remove most of the original shrubs adorning the front of the house.  This work was done on a Friday.

The contractor was to cart off and remove all the brush.  However, their dump truck was full of concrete from the walkway and stairs, so there was no room. They would remove it all come the first of the coming week.  They chose to pile all the this debris on the front lawn and on a spot that was nice and green.  Well, those that know me and my analness, this wasn't sitting well.  The grass would be damaged having all this debris sitting on it for days.

Thanks to my neighbor, his trailer, his muscle and his recycling center pass we took care of it!  We loaded and piled it all on his trailer, tied it down and made the slow 4+ mile trek to the center and dropped it off.

AH, what a relief it is!!!

Re-purpose Egg Shells

Calcium!

This is the first time in all the years that we've raised chicken that we saved the egg shells.

We dried them out, then crushed them by hand, as seen in the above photo.  The shells were then added to the chickens feed for added calcium, which aides in strengthening their egg shells.  A nice way to save a couple bucks versus buying calcium supplements but also nice to re-purpose.

Shred, Recycle and Hopefully Annoy!

I broke out our paper shredder this morning and tackled our pile of 'items to be shredded'. It really wasn't too large a pile but always nice to stay on top of it before it gets too big, plus it's great to see it all go.

Now most of the items was junk mail, and since our shredder isn't industrial strength, I open all the envelopes and only shred those items that have our names and address on them. All other items typically go out to the recycle bin.

However, today I took a different approach, one that I've done a few times in the past. I took all the pre-paid envelopes and filled them with their own offers and empty envelopes - of course the ones that didn't have our names on them, and put them all in the mailbox.

I realize that it prolly doesn't make a bit of difference to these big companies and that it's not going to cost them much money (for postage on their pre-paid envelopes) but it gives me some small bit of satisfaction.

Navin R. Johnson I Am Not...

"Things are going to start happening to me now"!

The new 2011 telephone book has arrived.

It's arrival has forced me to finally go through all our old phone books and in the end ten were tossed.

The good news is they were recycled. The bad news is just how wasteful these phone books have become. I don't believe we opened a single one of these books going back to 2007, not once. The Internet has help to makes these books obsolete for many.

Of course I like to keep some around to impress visitors when I rip them in half...

Electronics Recycling

Sony Electronics Inc. and Waste Management Recycle America held a recycling event at Gillette Stadium (the home of our New England Patriots) this past Saturday, Sept. 13 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m - bring any and all old electronics and drop off for free. Not sure about your town but our town charges $10.00 per item to dispose of electronic devices, i.e. TV's, computer monitor's, AC's, etc. We participated and brought (2) old televisions and (1) old VCR, pictured above.

We saved a few bucks, helped the environment AND there are (3) less items in my dads house to be concerned with, hooray!!

Recycling Fun Fact:

• According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 82 percent of the 2.25 million tons of old TVs, cell phones and computer products generated in the last two years ended up in landfills. By recycling old electronics products, useful materials – such as glass, plastic and metals – can be collected and re-used in the manufacture of other products. Since their partnership began, Sony and Waste Management have collected a total of 9.2 million pounds of electronic waste, and the companies anticipate that number will grow exponentially.