we recycle most everything at our house. From junk mail, to aluminum cans,to glass jars, newspaper,etc.I am wondering why they don't have a recycling firm that would collect these boxes, Our son runs a recycling plant. You would be surprised at what is thrown away each and every day that is not recyclable and is in the bins.
Mary

I need to try cardboard for weed control. Thanks for that idea! I'll have to start collecting cardboard as we just took a load to the recycle center.

I steam clean almost everything or use Dawn dish washing liquid. I have recently started using Vinegar. I hate the smell of it so never tried it until one of our kitties was sick and peed on the sofa a bit. It along with baking soda, worked so well and I never even smelled the vinegar! Yay! No kitty smell either.

I also use baking soda instead of soft scrub and microfiber clothes for polishing.

We recycle everything as our recycle center now takes all numbers of plastics. All oil from automobiles are taken to an auto parts store for recycling too. I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of for now.

Sylvia, Dollar General is my #1 source for cardboard too. An appliance store in town has a waiting list for their cardboard, which is kind of silly because Home Depot a mile up the road is always willing to give me cardboard, and so is Dollar General. I prefer the latter because they don't mind if I go in the back by myself and take what I want.

Cardboard is the gardener's best friend. I use it mostly as a weed barrier, and wouldn't have been able to create my bean and squash garden this year without it. The garden is at the site of what used to be our inground pool, and the fill brought in by the excavator was a weed paradise.

Our garbage collection doesn't recycle (nice, huh?), so every couple of weeks I gather up my son's family's recycling and my own, and drive 25 miles to a recycling facility. They do a single-stream collection, so I don't have to separate glass and plastic. They also take newspaper, office paper, and cardboard. I routinely check out the cardboard, but it consists mostly of greasy pizza boxes.

I don't drink soda so I don't have many plastic 6-pack rings. But when they come my way I always cut the rings to prevent marine animals from getting stuck in them. What we're doing to our oceans and sea life is unconscionable.

Styrofoam is my big recycling frustration. Because I sell online and ship fairly often, I can use the Styrofoam peanuts that come my way. But what to do about the big pieces? Manufacturers are still using this stuff, and nobody wants to take it.

Most of my clothes come from the Salvation Army thrift shops. This is a big money saver. Plus I love "the hunt" for something good.

Most of my books are bought used from Amazon or eBay. In most cases they're cheaper than the Kindle versions, plus I admit to still preferring books most of the time. I donate most of them to the library book sale when I'm finished. Of course, I'd save even more money by borrowing them from the library, but this way I recycle the books and avoid both waiting lists and overdue fines. ;-)

We've always grown as much food as possible. This will be a terrible apple year--we must have had a freeze as the apples were developing--but I still have many containers of last year's applesauce in the freezer. I have two of my wonderful bean arches this year (yay for vertical gardening!).

At this point in my life (widowed, not working) I'm so grateful to be frugal by nature.

we've gone from 2-3 garbage cans to one recycle and one regular garbage can...now though, have gone from one kitchen garbage can to 3, lol...good thing I have places to tuck them all in!

We have recycling and green bin waste pick-up by the city. Pretty much everything gets recycled (aluminum foil, plastic bags including the outer bags toilet paper, paper towels, etc come in), paper etc.
I keep any glass jars I can find, it's harder and harder to find them. I keep dried goods in (pasta, quinoa, oatmeal etc).

The city takes any food material and kitty litter for composting.
I also do worm composting. I love these little guys, and any worm compost that I can't use, I have ready takers on Freecycle for it.

I hate seeing good water go down the drain, waiting for it to heat or cool. I keep a bucket beside the sink that the water goes into, and it's used for rinsing cans etc for recycling, a quick rinse of a mug, watering my houseplants, etc.

We have 1 livingroom light on a timer, we only use the one light unless we're reading. Our apartment is nice and bright so very few lights are on for any length of time.

I get our daily newspaper, and I fold it into pouches, to use for my indoor green garbage, which gets put into the large bin for curbside pickup. (are you confused yet?) LOL

Paper.....oh, I'm such a paper-holic. I hate, hate seeing waste of paper. I re-use paper for writing and for the printer. I love binders and notepaper and pens. I fear pens are going to be obsolete, then panic will set in.

Any errands, we do while we're out. We don't go out for just one thing. We wait till the grocery store sales start and do them at once. Either drive to a couple of stores, or price-match if necessary.

I like cruising some select second-hand stores. I despise clothes shopping with a passion and won't do it, unless I absolutely have to but I hate it. But I love looking for kitcheny things and seeing what is there for sale.

Freecycle, freecycle, freecycle. Both for getting and giving. I don't mind getting other people's cast-offs at all.

We were in the market for an indoor grill/griddle to cook out on our balcony. The only ones in the stores are the 2-sided George Foreman styles, and that's not what we wanted. I posted a request on Freecycle for one and was gifted one. In virtually new condition, it was too big for them, and it's perfect for us. Every time we use it, I'm so grateful to the person who gave it to us.

I never use the dryer, we dry our clothes on an folding rack in the winter OUT on the balcony and we bring them in frozen! LOL it smells so nice and fresh and cool when they thaw. In the summer we have a 5-string clothesline on T-bars and that gets used all the time.

Oh, I picked up some marvelous large square buckets from Freecycle. They had margarine in them, so totally food-save.
I have my large bags of flour and rice in them. I also buy kitty litter in bags and empty them in the buckets. I don't buy the litter in the buckets so no recycling/waste there. I also got some smaller square buckets from Dairy Queen, Williams Coffee Pub that I use for worm composting. I have 4 on the go now. They're also great for putting my dry cat food in, putting like items in them in the freezer.

Jasdip's mention of freecycle reminded me:

Last spring I started saving broken china for a gal who uses it in crafts...
but she moved away!

so I had 3 huge totes full of broken, crazed, and/or minimally stained china, as well as a number of vases & the like that I had intended to use in my own crafts before I remembered that I am the Uncrafter (I'm the one in every crowd who always glues her fingers together)!

put an ad on cl, asked people to call or text, got an *ecstatic* text from someone who was just getting started in mosaic art & other broken china crafts.

She & I arranged to meet at my vet's office the next morning, & she sent me another message about how excited she was.

which inspired me to go through things & add another tote full of old dishes.

She was so thrilled with all that stuff that she threw her arms around me & gave me a hug & thanked me 3 or 4 times;
it made me feel very very good.

Sylvia, it never occurred to me that someone might use cracked, etc., china for crafting. Great idea!

Jasdip, what a wonderful recycling program your city has. Recycling kitty litter--love it! We have nothing like that here. I bring my used compact fluorescent bulbs and spent batteries to Home Depot for recycling. I wonder if I could convince them to take used kitty litter too. Somehow I doubt it. :-)

When the city composts kitty litter, do they subject it to high temperatures to kill toxoplasmosis?

I use stall pellets, a compacted corn product, about $6 for 40 lbs at the feed store, as kitty litter.

When liquid hits the very small pellets, they dissolve into a fluffy sort of powder.

Scoop out the poopie & compost the rest.

Some days I can wrestle that 40 lb bag, & some days I get someone to carry it to the car;
when I get home, I pour it into 5-gallon buckets so I can carry it inside more easily.

Sylvia I just looked online at our chain store that sells farm and animal supplies and their stall pellets/shavings are all wood. No compressed corn pellets like you have. That sounds very interesting! It doesn't get dusty like clay kitty litter?

I avoid buying over-packaged products, but we two are still able to fill a large recycling container w/wheels every two weeks. Half is newspapers, shredded mail and cardboard.

We have very little food waste, despite having no disposal -- a small pail goes from garage to the curb once a week. (I don't think the home-raised pig of yore could survive on this.)

I'm a big errand-consolidator. DH laughs at my circular route of stops. He also thinks I'm daft to cut up the plastic loops from cans or milk jugs, Alisande.

No cats = no litter, but there are 365 dog food cans every year. (Prescription diet.)

I don't have a closet full of 'specialized' cleaning soaps or dusters, toilet cleaners, whatever 'necessities' Proctor & Gamble keeps inventing to add to landfills.

I don't think any of this is especially 'green' behavior-- just how I was raised. Wasting water was a big NO, thanks to a grandmother who'd had to fetch hers from a pump in the yard.

oops, the pellets are pine.

I have bought corn pellets, but they got soggy & yucky.

& if you get snowed in, you can burn pine pellets in your wood stove.

the un-used ones of course...

It's dusty when I change the litter, but not as bad, I think, as clay litter.

Our re-cycling company picks up the plastic ring things as well as metal food cans.

Some of their rules are mystifying;
they'll pick up almost any paper or cardboard...as long as it hasn't been wet...& they won't pick up pizza boxes.

They won't take plastic bags, either, but the grocery stores have re-cycle bins at the front.

In spite of using canvas bags for groceries, I always have some kind of plastic bags to get rid of, from macaroni or potting soil, etc.

Food waste can be composted or buried;
it'll enrich the soil.

Alisande, I'm flummoxed by styrofoam as well;
there's a fast-ish food place here that's famous for its iced tea, which they serve in big styrofoam cups/containers.

I always keep mine, vowing to cut them down & use them for starting seeds (& someday I'm gonna do that!), but that still leaves a styrofoam ring about 3" deep & 6" long.

Multiply me by everybody in town & that's a lot of iced tea & a lot of styrofoam in the landfill.

I once stopped there for lunch, & someone put my order in a cardboard box;
the manager on duty picked it up to change it, & I told him not to worry, I could eat it out of the cardboard box;
in fact I didn't like styrofoam plates, & he could put it in a cardboard box any time.

I couldn't decipher the look on his face, so I said, "just whatever's cheaper."

& he told me that styrofoam is cheaper than cardboard!

so now we know why places still use it.

One of the things I do with the styrofoam peanuts....when I have a big flower pot that I want to plant something in...especially small plants that don't have extensive root systems....not like when planting a tree or shrub or something that is going to get big....I put the styrofoam peanuts in the bottom of the pot...maybe even filling it as much as half way up. Saves on potting soil and makes the pot not so heavy if I have to move it.

That's a good idea about using stall pellets for kitty litter.

I compost my kitchen scraps. When I had chickens, I fed them to the chickens. I have pigs now and if there is anything that the pigs will eat, of course, they get them. When I was growing up, my mother would have thrown a fit if any kind of food went into the trash. If we didn't have an animal to feed it to, it went outside to the garden area. My sister lived here on my place one time for about 8 months, and I came home one day and found her burning trash. Not only did she have cans and bottles...which don't burn in the trash....she was burning up food scraps. I told her, "I can't believe we were raised by the same woman."

Sylvia here is a sample of what my TSC store sells.
The description is
35LB CONDENSED SOFTWOOD PELLETS
- High performance, premium Horse and Stable bedding
- 100% Natural (Biodegradable) Softwood Pellets
- The most absorbent product on the market
- Virtually dust free

different bag, but it looks & sounds like what I get.

The gal at the feed store said that people had been using hardwood pellets in their pellet stoves, but hardwood is too difficult to get now, or maybe it's too expensive, so they're mixing the hardwood with the 'softwood' (pine).

burns a little faster & a little hotter, but it works!

great idea about styrofoam in flower pots!

I have a giant aloe (not that I can grow them, let alone grow them that big-I got it at an estate sale) that was in a very small pot when I brought it in.

tried one pot after another, finally got a big washtub.

which would be immoveable if filled with soil, & in this area, you have to bring aloes inside for the winter.

I didn't think of styrofoam peanuts, didn't have any of 'em either, but my neighbor gave me some plastic soda bottles from her re-cycle bin.

I filled the tub about half way before adding soil.

The plant's roots aren't very deep, but the leaves needed some support, & they sort of rest on the edges of the tub.

I recycle paper, cardboard, aluminum....

I also have HUGE deck planters. I put an inverted 5gallon bucket in the middle of the pot turned upside down to take up space. Then I fill in around the sides of the bucket with packing peanuts....then about 6" of dirt on top. Saves money on top soil....takes less water to get it all wet...the pot weights less if you move it.

I've started planting perennials from seed. Walmart had .10cent pkgs of seeds, like...Columbine, Blanket Flower, Bell flower...

I've also started roses from cuttings, using rooting hormone.

I used epsom salts and free horse manure for fertilizer.

I'm intrigued with the stall pellets! I checked, and two local stores carry them under their own brand. Reviews on one weren't all that good, so I'll try the other. A number of reviewers are using them as cat litter.

I'm presently using clay litter from Dollar General: $1 for 7 lbs. Used to be 10 lbs., but we all know how that goes.

I guess it would be smart to change over to the pellets gradually so the cats get acclimated to them slowly.

I used to use Styrofoam peanuts as a layer in the bottom of my vegetable planting containers (actually plastic storage bins). This worked well until I had to empty one. What a mess! "Ghost poo" all over the place! So now I use big pieces of Styrofoam broken into chunks.

Forgot to say: Great thread, Sylvia!

This post was edited by alisande on Wed, Jul 30, 14 at 17:50

Oh with four indoor kitties I need to look into those stall pellets. Thanks! I'll be back to read more. I've a bedroom to get ready for our new bed and running out of time!

Sylvia is tough on china............4 totes of cracked dishes? I don't even own that many dishes. And if you cut a styrofoam cup to use as a starter container, you still have the cup left to dispose of after you re-plant the item.
The recycle bin might go out every month or two. Driving to recycle is only when I get cash for the trash,

Alisande, I used styrofoam peanuts in the bottom of my very first worm bin. I then topped it with landscaping cloth and then the bedding and worms. This was all info from the net. If the peanuts got wet, they got slimy and messy.

I dispense with all of that crap and just put worms and shredded paper bedding directly in the bin. Much easier, and it's worked for me for years. They're happy, and I'm happy.

I'm intrigued with the pellets. If I buy a bag and it doesn't work, then I wonder what to do with it. I'll have to do more researching.

Thanks, Alisande!

sorry to hear about the ghost poop:
Did your planters have drainage holes in the bottom?

I can't remember how I came to have all that broken china & stuff;
I'm pretty klutzy in the kitchen, but not all that bad.

It seems like some of it was stuff I'd gotten at estate sales specifically for crafts, & a lot of it was chipped or messed up already.

edited to add:

forgot to respond to the comment that I would still have the styrofoam to throw away.

That's right...
but I don't have any other way of disposing of it, since no one here accepts it for re-cycling.

At least the cups don't go to the landfill after just one use, & a lot of my seedlings go home from plant swaps with other gardeners...who also have to dispose of the styrofoam, since it deteriorates so rapidly.

The problem with that stuff is that it's *manufactured* for one-time use.

It's made to throw away.

I hate that.

Something an old friend once told me has stuck in my mind for a number of years.

She said she knew she couldn't re-cycle everything, so she tried to at least not throw anything away 'the first time'.

If you use the plastic bag the pine pellets come in as a trash bag, you've doubled its usefulness & reduced the number of trash bags you've thrown out.

not perfect by a long shot, but better than putting that plastic bag in a plastic bag at the curb.

This post was edited by sylviatexas on Wed, Jul 30, 14 at 21:14

I can't imagine anyone taking a perfectly good plastic bag and not re-using it.

I re-use the paper bag that potatoes come in, for our kitchen waste for the green bin, the same with the paper sugar bags. Our milk comes in heavy plastic bags, and they all get re-used.....for freezing food, for garbage, etc. Even the flimsy produce bags get filled with kitty litter and thrown in the garbage if our green bin is full.

What does a 35lb bag of horse pellets cost? I can't find it on the internet ....

I'm currently paying $5 for a 20lb box of Arm & Hammer clumping litter, multi-cat variety. Its good.....

Yes, my planters have drainage holes. I forget why I had to empty that one, but I remember the resulting mess!

Re saving money, I have one of those electric plans that give me free electricity from 7 to 11 p.m. every night. I've learned to do my laundry and run the dishwasher during those hours, and I often shower then as well. Plus I sometimes use my bedroom window fan or A/C to cool the room. I've been pleased with my electric bills despite more A/C use than usual downstairs this summer.

I don't need any furniture, but when I did, I looked for antiques and/or used furniture. Both usually cost less than new, and are often much better quality.

Sylvia said: "I use stall pellets, a compacted corn product, about $6 for 40 lbs at the feed store, as kitty litter."

yep.

I don't know that you could reasonably buy them on the internet; the shipping would be horrendous.

& 40 pounds of pellets goes further than 40 pounds of litter, since it has more volume.

Regarding the cardboard for weed control, you can also use several layers (8 to 10) of newspaper instead. Just be sure to use the newsprint only, not the glossy ads. I actually prefer newspaper over cardboard as you can make holes and plant through it. Cardboard takes MUCH longer to decompose.

To prepare a grassy area for gardening, just cut the grass very short then lay down the 8 to 10 layers of newspapers (hose it down so it doesn't blow away) then cover with mulch. If you do this in the fall, it will be wormy and ready by spring for planting. It sure saves digging and sore backs :-)

You will be amazed at how much newspaper it will use up. Win-win

Wantoretire_did is right. Last spring a lady was requesting newspapers to do that very thing. I saved all of ours and my step-father's and she was thrilled! It's called Lasagna gardening/layering, and it's great for killing grass when you want to dig a flowerbed too.

Here's my tip for the packing peanuts. I've used them for years to take up volume in large containers. Stuff them into those mesh bags that some produce comes in, or into pantyhose. Cut the hosiery into pieces and tie off or use rubber bands to close the openings.

This keeps the peanuts from going all over the place, plus the little bags can be reused. Roots actually love styrafoam and will grow in and out and all around the little peanuts, even enclosed in the pantihose. That's a real plus, horticulturally speaking.

Shame on you, Rhizo! Why didn't you share this tip with me a dozen years ago, before we knew one another? Could have saved me that crazy mess! Tsk, tsk . . . :-)

I see that Evanston, a suburb south of us, is starting to eliminate plastic bags at large stores. This is also on the agenda for Chicago...eventually. You'll still get plastic bags for meat, produce.

Maui went plastic bag free a couple years ago, and almost all of Hawaii is plastic bag free now. Foodland on Maui even gives you a five cent 'thanks' credit for bringing your own reuseable bags.

Reusable bags and not running the water while I brush my teeth are two 'new' things that I didn't learn at home.