Out with the Old and in with the New: What Should You Do with Your Pesky Old Shoes?

As the new year fast approaches, we look to make resolutions—letting go of that which no longer serves us, and ushering in new practices, people, and beliefs to better ourselves and the world around us. This year, I urge you to adopt some greener living practices to carry with you throughout 2020 and the rest of your life!

Reduce, reuse, recycle is a perhaps hackneyed environmental mantra, but with the classic 3 Rs in mind we can do a lot to eliminate sources of waste in our everyday life.

This week, as we prepare to welcome in the new year in just a few short weeks, I encourage you to take the “out with the old, in with the new” mentality that often accompanies the new year and apply it to one specific facet of your life: Your old shoes!

In the consumerist, capitalism-driven, fast-changing world in which we live, it is all too easy to accumulate lots of stuff. Among this plethora of accumulation you’ll likely find a multitude of old, worn-out, outdated, or unwanted footwear.

According to a surprisingly riveting article, Insights from the Frontline of Footwear, the global shoe market has boomed in recent years thanks to strong demand from younger generations fueled by the cultural phenomenon of footwear as a luxury status symbol.  Euromonitor, which conducts market research and statistics, estimated the US shoe market to be worth a staggering $76 billion in 2018.

Whether you purchase sneakers at staggering price tags annually, love to indulge in the latest styles, or simply wear your shoes until they are falling apart like I do, chances are you’ll eventually end up with shoes you’re ready to do away with.

With those 3 Rs in mind, here’s what you can do with old or unwanted shoes as an alternative to throwing them away:

1. Donate old shoes to charity:
If your shoes are wearable and in good condition, donating them to a charity shop like Goodwill can help provide shoes to individuals in need while simultaneously keeping materials out of the landfill, where it can take a pair of sneakers, for example, up to 1,000 years to break down.
You can also donate through the national shoe recycling program Shoes 4 Souls  or through Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe Program where they re-purpose old shoes to create courts, fields, tracks, playgrounds, and even new products.

2. Upcycle your shoes to give them a new lease on life:
Adding a new pair of laces, sewing on patches, and dying or decorating your old shoes can help you get more out of your shoes before you’re ultimately ready to part ways.

3. Recycle your old shoes:
This could be as simple as depositing your shoes at your local recycling center or textile recycling drop box.  Certain thrift shops or clothing stores may also accept shoes, either to re-sell or to recycle alongside other non-reusable clothing/textile donations.

Additional resources and ideas on how to refurbish, recycle, and re-purpose your shoes can be found here with 12 Things to do with Your Old Shoes.

The inspiration for this week’s topic came about earlier in the year as I was packing up some things to move from Maine back to Vermont. I encountered a pair of intensely worn out sneakers and some water shoes that had been thoroughly destroyed after getting stuck in a mudflat. As I had no need or use for this now-dilapidated footwear, I fought against the temptation to simply throw them away, instead asking myself: what is the most environmentally friendly option for disposing of these?

Needless to say, the shoes traveled back with me and subsequently made their way to my town’s recycling center. I not only brought the aforementioned shoes, but scoured my house for shoes both to donate (those that were in good condition) and to recycle (those that, like the aforementioned nearly destroyed shoes, were no longer viable footwear).

The process of donating the usable shoes went off without a hitch. However, my town's recycling center did not have the means to recycle the worn out shoes, informing me that such shoes would simply be thrown away. Disappointed, I continued my search for a viable recycling option. Via Goodwill's website, I found that Goodwill accepts worn out shoes for recycling. I called my local Goodwill for more details and found out that any shoes in unusable condition that are donated are collected by a third party recycler and sent over seas. I was less than thrilled with the prospect of my worn out footwear making the journey over seas to be dumped and dealt with in someone else's backyard. However, the fact of the matter is that the majority of footwear is, in fact, manufactured over seas (often in inhumane conditions, as is the case with a lot of our clothing). It would make sense then, that old shoes were being sent to the source to be recycled and re-purposed.

This raises another interesting point in that, when it comes to footwear and fashion choices in general, it is more environmentally friendly to buy products produced and sourced locally and ethically. Check out The Good Trade's list of 14 Fair Trade Shoe Brands for Every Occasion and Vetta's 9 Ethical Shoe Brands You Need to Know  for a good place to start learning more about ethically-sourced footwear.

I further looked into North Face's Clothes the Loop recycling program, which purports to accept shoes in any condition at numerous drop off locations to then pass on to their partnering organization, Shoes 4 Souls. However, Shoes 4 Souls very clearly only accepts shoes in gently used conditions, leaving me dubious as to the efficacy of recycling worn out shoes through this program. This left Nike's Reuse a Shoe Program as the most viable option for me. To take advantage of this program, you can drop off old shoes at a Nike or Converse store with a collection bin. You can also mail your shoes to Nike's recycling center in Belgium, but you incur the shipping expenses. As explained on Nike's website, they accept any brand of athletic shoe, but are unable to recycle sandals, dress shoes, boots, or shoes with metal such as cleats. Using their Find a Store Locator, I was dismayed to find that the nearest store was over 2 hours away. Similarly, a search for participating Converse Stores Near Me yielded no nearby results. However, if you live near any Nike or Converse stores, recycling your worn out athletic footwear at one of these locations is a great option. I would, however, call first to double check that the store participates in the Reuse a Shoe Program.

Asics, my running shoe of choice, also partners with recycling company I:CO to recycle worn out footwear into new products, such as the soles of new shoes. Again, there were no participating store locations near me, but if you live near a participating location, this a great option for you. The store even offers a coupon toward your next purchase to incentivize folks to utilize their recycling service.

In the midst of my research, I also came across numerous local shoe shops that had partnered with organizations like Rerun Shoes to redistribute gently used shoes of all kinds to those in need, so be sure to check out local, smaller-scale recycling venues in addition to the footwear giants of Nike, Asics, and the like.

After a deep dive into the numerous recycling options for my worn out shoes, I decided that the most viable option would be to donate my shoes to Goodwill, where they would eventually make their way (in a bulk shipment) over seas to be recycled into new footwear and other products. As explained on their webiste, at Goodwill such textiles are sold on the international market to provide funding for programs while ultimately diverting millions of pounds of waste from the landfill.

The process of donating my gently used shoes was simple, and although finding a place for my worn out shoes proved to be slightly more difficult, the processes of both donating and recycling shoes is undeniably worthwhile from an environmental standpoint. As cited on The Chic Ecologist, 300 million pairs of shoes end up in landfills every year! The shoes that I donated and recycled will not be a part of that statistic, and I hope that you will now feel empowered, enabled, and encouraged to keep all of your future unwanted shoes out of the landfill as well by means of donation and textile recycling. Reducing, reusing, and recycling our waste is a key step on our journey toward greener living, and I can think of no better way to take a step in the right direction than by responsibly disposing of our superfluous footwear.

Are you feeling inspired to round up and recycle / donate old shoes in your life? What are your thoughts on the at times absurdly wasteful and ever-influential juggernaut of the fashion industry? Do you have other tips for reusing, refurbishing, and re-purposing your footwear? As always, feel free to chime in in the comments section below.

~Sam

Shop Small! This Saturday and Every Day...

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and with it comes a barrage of incredible deals from big-box stores, impersonal internet giants, and technological empires. In recent years, the holiday of Thanksgiving and its gratitude-centric aims (albeit ones that often cloud the deeply troubling roots of a holiday steeped in the mistreatment of native peoples whose oppression continues to this day) have been overshadowed by capitalistic, consumer-driven bargain shoppers manically sussing out the best deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, in between Friday and Monday, there is Saturday (as well as Sunday, but for the purposes of this post, we will focus on Saturday).

And on this Saturday, as an alternative to stampeding humans to death in the quest for cheap goods and staring bleary-eyed at a screen while you max out your credit card, my hope—and the hope of small businesses everywhere—is that you’ll get out and shop small instead.

Shopping small may not have the same mega-advertised savings and benefits as these other shopping-focused days of the holiday season, however, it does have the often undervalued and immensely impactful benefit of supporting small businesses to help communities thrive.

According the the U.S. Small Business Administration, as of 2018, 99.9% of US businesses are small businesses, which currently employ more than 47.5% of the private workforce in the U.S. and account for 1.9 million new jobs annually. Thus, small businesses are an integral part of the economic landscape.

As explained on SmallBusiness.com, Small Business Saturday was created in 2010 under the sponsorship of American Express in response to Black Friday. Since then it has grown into a national movement, garnering celebrity endorsements from the likes of Karlie Kloss and Hamilton creator Lin Manuel-Miranda (of whom I am a huge fan, by the way).

It’s celebrated in the U.S. on the last Saturday in November, and has gained serious momentum since its inception nearly a decade ago, with participation rates rising from 44% of the population in 2010 to a projected 77% in 2019.

Shopping small, of course, has an environmental benefit by reducing fossil fuel use in transportation to/from stores (both for the consumers and the goods they are consuming). Small businesses are often accessible to their local customer base by means of walking, biking, and public transit, generally offer a larger amount of locally sourced items, belong to the community and therefore act in the best interest of the local community (both environmentally and otherwise), utilize land less destructively than big-box stores, and sell higher quality products that tend to be more durable and therefore last longer. 

In addition to being more environmentally friendly and sustainable, shopping locally offers a multitude of other benefits, according to Forbes’ 5 Benefits of Shopping Locally on Small Business Saturday: 
-Shopping locally can revitalize communities as local businesses reinvest a higher percentage of their income into their communities than chains —nearly twice as much. You can learn more about this so-called "Multiplier Effect" courtesy of the American Independent Business Alliance.
-Supporting local businesses can also help create more local jobs.
-Local offerings can be diverse and are often unique from the routinely and uniformly stocked products available at chain stores.
-It can also strengthen local networks and provide services perfectly tailored to your unique cultural, social, and environmental geography.
-When local businesses are vibrant and thriving, it can increase real estate values in the area.

Of course, all of these benefits hold true not only on Small Business Saturday, but on every day of the year. If you’re in the practice of ordering countless items online or buying exclusively from big-box stores and chains, let this Small Business Saturday be a trial run of a more sustainable, community-driven, and intentional pattern of purchasing going forward that will benefit you, your community, and the environment.

For those of you rolling your eyes and scoffing at the idea of regressing in the midst of an ever-evolving digital age, you can of course utilize technology in your efforts to shop small. For example, some sellers on Amazon are small-business people. Amazon Handmade, in particular, offers a platform for artisans to sell their handcrafted wares. Likewise, you can search by location on Etsy to purchase items made by someone in your community. You can also utilize Google’s shopping feature to search for products available nearby.

Whether you find local products online or on the streets, shopping locally is just one of the many steps on our journey toward greener living. So, next Saturday head to your local cafe, peruse your local bookstore, and shop at your local grocers and boutiques. Source your goods and the gifts you’re buying for others locally. And, as always, let me know how it goes in the comments section below.

~Sam

Greener Living's Holiday Gift Guide

It’s officially that time of year again: snow is falling, Hallmark and Lifetime are showing 24/7 Holiday movies, and Thanksgiving is nearly upon us.  With the colder weather, the cozier clothes, and the impending Holiday season, comes the seemingly inevitable capitalism-driven consumerist, gift-centric expectations and traditions. A dark underbelly of the holidays, of sorts, this year I encourage you to put your dollars to greener uses by giving the gift of sustainability.

First and foremost, by shopping at thrift stores, Habitat ReStores, or Play-it-again sporting good stores, you can help reduce the environmental impact of gift-giving and give clothes, cabinets, and equipment a second life.

Furthermore, be sure to revisit my previous post ‘Tis the Season… for tips on sustainable gift wrapping and other best-practices to combat the excessive waste of the holidays.

Within my multitude of blog posts, I have highlighted numerous sustainable products that individuals can utilize and  incorporate to eliminate waste in their daily lives. However, many of these products would also make a great gift! I write today to highlight these products and to generate a list of ideas for sustainable gift giving.

If you know someone who washes their clothes, consider gifting them a Cora Ball and revisit my post on Greening Your Laundry Routine to learn more.

Consider gifting someone a compost tumbler or other collection system with some resources and options outlined in my post on Household Composting.

When giving a gift card, consider sending an electronic copy to avoid the plastic waste.

For those of you looking for a practical gift, reusable dishcloths, handkerchiefs, or cloth napkins can add some festive flair and much-needed ecological upgrades to everyday routines.

As featured in my four-part plastics purge series, there are numerous products that make great gifts that can help eliminate sources of disposable, single-use plastics in our life. These include reusable straws, reusable shopping bags / non-plastic produce bag alternatives, reusable water bottles, reusable food storage containers and ziploc bags, and reusable cutlery sets.

For the warm-beverage consumers in your life, consider gifting them a reusable coffee cup / travel mug, and do your part to help combat the Coffee Cup Crisis. If someone you know uses a Keurig on the daily, consider gifting them reusable k-cups (an eco-friendly alternative to the disposable single-use options).

Additionally, you can seek out “green” gifts that speak to the specific interests and hobbies of the people in your life. For example, does someone you know love to bake? Reusable silicone baking cups are an inexpensive, fun, and thoughtful gift idea.

The possibilities are endless! If you’ve already been journeying down the path toward greener living, there is no better time than the holidays to invite others to journey along with you!

Do you have other sustainable gift ideas? Tips for reducing waste during the holidays? Please share in the comments section below! As always, best of luck on your journey toward greener living, and I hope you have a happy, sustainable, holiday season!

~Sam

Save the Birds!: How to Prevent Window Strikes

It began like any other morning. I was bundled up in some cozy pajamas enjoying a mug of tea in my kitchen, when all of a sudden I heard a sickening thud. A bird had flown straight into the window. The sudden and unexpected sound set my heart racing. As I cautiously peered out the window to assess the damage, I fully expected to see the dead body of the small, fragile bird crushed upon impact. The bird was there, but appeared to be alive. Breathing heavily and staying where it was below the window, it was likely in shock. When I checked back later, the bird had flown away. However, some decidedly morbid research on the internet informed me that the bird would likely die from internal bleeding.

This bird, sadly, is just one of the up to one billion birds that die annually in the United States from striking glass windows, according to the American Bird Conservancy.

While this is one of the most costly threats to bird populations, the American Bird Conservancy also notes that it is a relatively easy problem to solve. Their site lists a variety of relatively inexpensive homeowner products that can prevent bird strikes. For the more frugal and less formal among us, myself included, there exist some simple DIY prevention methods, as outlined in Bird Watcher’s Digest. These methods include suspending tree branches in front of frequently struck windows, applying window decals, stickers, or tape, and suspending something unusual and bright like a pie pan, aluminum foil, or holiday decorations in front of the window. The general premise behind these strike prevention methods is to break up the reflective ability of large expanses of glass.

Generally speaking, windows readily reflect their surroundings, thereby creating the false impression of continued forests or open skies, which birds unknowingly seek to fly into.

While not technically a form of waste in our daily lives, I was inspired by this unfortunate encounter to educate others on ways to prevent window strikes and hopefully save more birds from meeting a similar fate. After all, living more harmoniously with the natural world is undoubtedly a facet of greener living.

And so, after researching bird strikes and common methods of prevention, I opted for the DIY route, fashioning some seasonally-appropriate snowflake window decals. I thought that paper snowflakes would be an easy and quick fix to my newfound bird problem. However, it turns out that despite my many winters in grade school crafting these delightful paper snowflakes, I simply could not remember how to make one. Admittedly humbled, I looked up a YouTube tutorial and had to follow it step by step, ultimately producing several lackluster albeit acceptable snowflakes. I then taped these up to the windows in question, spacing them apart in a way that would break up seemingly expansive reflections.

The goal with the decals is to disrupt the reflected portion of the window, so that the spaces available seem unappealingly claustrophobic or too small to fly through.
Although initially infuriating, the snowflake crafting was actually fun and nostalgic. I used recycled paper from discarded print-outs (reduce, reuse recycle!), thereby turning waste into tasteful and functional crafts.

If there is a window at your home that is prone to bird strikes, I highly recommend crafting decals for all the seasons, be it snowflakes in the Winter, flowers in the Spring, leaves in the Fall, and perhaps suns or some other seasonally-themed idea for the Summer. You can also craft bird silhouette cut outs as an added deterrent (birds feel threatened by other birds).

The Humane Society of the United States lists some of the aforementioned prevention methods in addition to more ideas such as using window screens, external shutters, and interior shades or curtains to prevent bird strikes. 

Birding is one of the most popular and fastest-growing outdoor hobbies. Many individuals enjoy simply watching birds from their windows. Even if you don’t birdwatch yourself, you’d probably prefer not to have birds crashing into your windows and littering the perimeter of your house with their corpses.

Regardless of your affinity for birdwatching, bird-proofing your windows can offer low-cost, high-impact options to exist less destructively in our world. It is with this goal in mind, that I encourage you to get your craft on and help conserve the population of birds currently losing their lives to preventable window strikes.

Additionally, it is always encouraged to convene more regularly with the natural world, so if you or someone you know would like to get more involved in bird watching, check out Audubon’s tips for How to Start Birding. Audubon’s website is also a great resource for learning more about birds in general.

Have you had a bird strike your window before? Are you excited about the prospect of crafting or installing deterrents? Do you love birding / observing wildlife? Whatever your stance, I hope this post encourages you to take preventative measures before the bird strikes occur. As always, feel free to share your thoughts, concerns, questions, and progress in the comments section below. Best of luck on your journey toward greener living.

~Sam

Stop Before You Pop: An Exposé on Sustainable Popcorn Making

We’ve all been there: waiting eagerly as the final seconds tick down on the microwave timer, the pleasant little pops are few and far between, and the aroma of freshly-popped popcorn is wafting tantalizingly in the air. Upon hearing the long-awaited beep beep beep signaling the popcorn’s completion, we snatch the bag out, careful not to burn ourselves as we pour the contents into a bowl and tromp out to resume our position on the couch, a movie queued and ready to go.

In the frivolity of popcorn, it can be all too easy to simply overlook the waste we generate. However, as with most products of convenience, microwave popcorn has an underlying dark side of wastefulness. From the cardboard box the bags are packaged in, to the plastic that wraps each individual bag, to the bags themselves, microwave popcorn leaves much to be desired in the realm of sustainability.

Luckily for us zero-waste warriors out there, there exists more sustainable alternatives that allow us to have our popcorn and eat it too, free from the single-use, throwaway culture that pervades much of our lives today.

The first of these alternatives is the classic stove-top popping option. All you need is a stove top, a pot, some oil, and, of course, kernels. You heat the oil, add the kernels, cover the pot, and allow the kernels to pop over the heat. It’s a simple process, and although it takes about 10 minutes to prep and pop (admittedly longer than the average 2-3 minute microwave popcorn timeline), it has the added benefit of allowing you to customize your popcorn in the type of oil and seasonings you use.

A simple internet search of “how to make stove-top popcorn” will yield a myriad of easy to follow instructions and popcorn recipes. For your convenience and as a good starting point, I recommend checking out Elise Bauer’s Perfect Popcorn recipe.

For those of you who feel put off and disenfranchised by this 10-minute endeavor that produces an oily pot to clean, or for those of you in staunch support of utilizing a microwave, you can invest in a $14-$16 silicone air popper, such as the Colonel Popper . This product is available on Amazon, but I would recommend checking your local kitchen supply store in the hopes of shopping locally before ordering online.

I ordered this popper as a gift for my popcorn-loving dad back in June. Having since returned home, I have used it on multiple occasions with great success. Using a silicone air popper, such as the Colonel Popper, entails measuring out an amount of kernels, mixing those kernels in oil or  melted butter (I always choose butter), adding salt or other seasonings as desired, dumping the kernels/butter/seasoning into the popper, covering with the lid, and putting the whole thing in the microwave for about 3 minutes. You can eat the finished product right out of the bowl and then simply give it a wash‒no waste needed!

In addition to reducing waste in utilizing reusable pots / silicone poppers as opposed to single-use, plastic-encased bags, stove top or air popper alternatives have the added benefit of offering kernels packaged in recyclable containers. As with most products, buying kernels in bulk is the most sustainable, and often most economical, option. I happened to have Orville Redenbacher kernels on hand, and have been enjoying them just fine. Best of all, when I’m done I can recycle the container they came in. However, sourcing local kernels in glass or reusable containers is a step better. Even better than that, you could endeavor to grow your own popcorn kernels for ultimate self-sufficiency.

For an astonishingly thorough review of different brands of kernels, check out Food Shark Marfa’s Best Popcorn Kernels.

I was unable to find hard facts on the exact amount of waste generated from microwave popcorn each year. However, according to The Popcorn Institute, which promotes and performs 85% of all popcorn sales within the US, Americans consume 15 billion quarts of popcorn annually. With the invention of microwave popcorn in the 1980s and more than 80% of US households currently owning microwaves, one can assume that a significant amount of household popcorn is coming from microwave popcorn bags, thereby generating massive amounts of non-recyclable waste in the process.


In writing this week’s post on popcorn, my hope was not to diminish people’s zest for and consumption of this tasty, nutritious treat, but to instead promote more sustainable popping practices. Ultimately, in addition to reducing waste, popping your own corn is much less expensive and often healthier (microwave popcorn bags are lined with chemicals that have some substantial and as-of-yet unknown health impacts), than buying microwave popcorn or even pre-popped bags of popcorn, making it a win-win-win for your wallet, health, and our planet.

So, the next time you find yourself hankering for some popcorn, try these home-popping, lower waste alternatives. As always, let me know how it goes in the comments section below, and best of luck on your journey toward greener living.

~Sam

Greener Living: It's "in the cards"...

I’m sure we have all either given or received a gift card at least once in our lives. Gift cards offer a convenient, albeit  impersonal, gift option that allows the recipient to choose what they want to buy. Although there are commonly acknowledged pros and cons to giving and receiving gift cards, a con that is often overlooked is the environmental impact of plastic gift cards.

Gift cards are most commonly made from PVC—deemed by Greenpeace to be the most environmentally damaging of all plastics because it is difficult to recycle and because toxic, chlorine-based chemicals are released in the production, use, and disposal of PVCs. When you think of toxic plastics accumulating in our landfills and polluting our environment, plastic gift cards may not immediately come to mind as a significant source of such waste. However, according to Plenty magazine, a staggering 75 million pounds of PVC material from plastic cards enter the waste stream in the United States every year.

That’s 75 million pounds of plastic pollution that could be greatly reduced or eliminated by better decision making during the stages of using, purchasing, and disposing of gift cards.

When using a gift card, in order to increase the shelf-life and reduce the environmental impact of the plastic cards, be sure to reuse your gift cards whenever possible. Many cards can be reloaded and continually used by you or gifted to someone else.

In addition to reloading and re-gifting your cards, you can also reuse old gift cards in a variety of creative ways. From a multitude of crafting projects, to stabilizing a wobbly table leg, to labeling plants in your garden, to organizing yarn, cord, or wires—used gift cards are surprisingly versatile. Check out The Balance Everyday’s 14 Nifty Ways to Reuse Empty Gift Cards and This Old House’s 10 Uses for Gift Cards for a list of creative, innovative, and functional ways to put old, used up, empty gift cards to good use.

Additionally, if you get a gift card you’ll likely never use, consider selling or trading it on sites such as Cardavenue, Plastic Jungle, or Swapagift.com, as suggested by Plenty magazine.

Of course, in addition to reusing and re-purposing plastic gift cards, arguably the most important step you can take in combating this form of unnecessary and unsustainable plastic waste is to avoid it altogether by utilizing electronic gift cards whenever possible. Without saying too much, as it involves a gift for someone who consistently reads this blog, just today I ordered a gift card for someone’s birthday. Although my materialistic, capitalism-indoctrinated subconscious hesitated when faced with the choice between sending a physical plastic gift card (something tangible for the recipient to open and hold in their hands) and an e-card that would be delivered via email on the day of their birthday, it was but a slight hesitation.

The e-card, in addition to being less environmentally destructive than its plastic counterpart, is also incredibly convenient. A series of clicks and some quick payment info, and voila!—the gift card is set to be delivered, electronically, on the day I specified.

Utilizing e-gift cards also eliminates a lot of additional waste used in gift / gift card packaging. Although the cute tins and festive cases that gift cards are often delivered in may add some pizzazz and visual appeal to the gift-giving process, this too is ultimately a source of unnecessary waste. 

If e-gift cards aren’t an option or simply aren’t your cup of tea, you can still act with the environment’s best interest in mind by seeking biodegradable gift cards when available. Some retailers, including Target, REI, Borders, and Walmart, offer biodegradable gift cards made out of a corn-based material, so be sure to seek these out whenever possible.

As a consumer, you can eliminate plastic waste from PVC gift cards by seeking electronic and biodegradable alternatives. As the recipient of a plastic gift card, your responsibility lies in reusing, reloading, re-gifting, or re-purposing spent plastic cards in addition to disposing of cards that cannot be reused or re-purposed in a responsible manner.

If you’re anything like me, you may have accumulated a truly impressive stack of plastic gift cards over the years. Rather than tossing your spent plastic gift cards into the trash where they will accumulate in landfills, look to recycle these cards (along with the gift packaging they came in). To do so, you can use Earth 911’s recycling locator to find recycling services for gift boxes, plastic cards, and wrapping paper near you.

You can also mail used gift cards to Earthworks System, which collects and recycles used disposable PVC gift cards. They recycle the PVC cards into sheets of plastic which can then be used to manufacture new gift cards, thereby reducing the need for new PVC to be produced.

Although they do accept cards from individuals, large batches of cards are preferred, so consider setting up a collection at your office, school, or other community location.

Cards can be mailed to:

Earthworks c/o Halprin Ind.
25840 Miles Rd.
Bedford, Oh 44146

Overall, this week’s exploration into waste reduction of plastic gift cards is another great lesson on reducing, reusing, and recycling. Ultimately, in our ongoing effort to eliminate sources of waste in our everyday life, we should first and foremost reduce the number of plastic gift cards we purchase and circulate by opting for electronic or biodegradable alternatives whenever possible. We should also reuse plastic gift cards we have received by reloading or re-gifting cards whenever possible and by re-purposing or upcycling cards for a variety of crafts and useful purposes. When we do have plastic gift cards we want to dispose of, we should recycle the cards through services like Earthworks.

This week, eliminating waste on our journey toward greener living is most definitely “in the cards.” The next time you use, purchase, or dispose of a gift card, I urge you to keep the tenets of reduce/reuse/recycle in mind and to utilize some of the aforementioned waste-reducing tips and tricks.  In the meantime, I’m off to lead some youth through the wilderness, so I won’t be posting for a while. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions of sources of waste for me to cover in the future, let me know in the comments section below.

Until later,
   ~Sam

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: A How-to Guide for Hard-to-Recycle Items

 A lot of the waste reduction tactics and topics that have been covered thus far on Greener Living focus on the pivotal mindset of the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (and a fourth R, of course: refuse). However, when we are unable or unwilling to reduce the amount of trash we generate in our daily lives by refusing disposable items like single-use plastic water bottles, straws, coffee cups, tissues, and plastic bags—just to name a few—it becomes increasingly important to seek to reuse and recycle our waste whenever possible.

Mentioned briefly in my previous post on Greening Your Hygiene Routine, Terracycle is a unique recycling program worth a deeper look.

Terracycle partners with brands, manufacturers, and retailers to offer free collection and recycling of hard-to-recycle waste like toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, empty chapsticks, e-waste, energy bar wrappers, and cereal bags. Partnering organizations include Brita, Burt’s Bees, Colgate, Clif Bar, Eos, and Febreeze, among many others.

Some programs are brand-specific, while others are not. The Clif Bar Energy Bar Wrapper Recycling Program, for example, accepts all foil-lined energy bar wrappers in addition to all Clif Bar product packaging.

There are also some free general recycling programs available through Terracycle, such as their e-waste recycling program, plastic cereal bags and cereal bag liners of any brand, and oral care products of any brand accepted through Colgate’s Recycling Partnership.

Be sure to visit each program’s individual FAQ page for more information on what specific products can be sent in for recycling, whether or not said products need to be cleaned prior to sending them in, and whether or not there is a minimum weight required in order for the shipment to be sent. Burt’s Bees Recycle on Us program, for example, accepts only Burt’s Bees brand products ranging from lip balm tubes to wipes packaging to sunscreen tubes, and simply asks that as much of the remaining product as possible be removed and that the products be dry prior to shipping.

For items that are not included in the free brand-specific or general recycling programs through Terracycle, there is also the option to purchase a Zero Waste Box to collect difficult-to-recycle waste that is not accepted by municipal recycling streams or free Terracycle programs. These Zero Waste Boxes allow a wide range of products, like bottle caps, batteries, athletic balls, and beauty products, among many other offerings, to be recycled. However, these Zero Waste Box options are rather expensive and therefore not widely accessible.

As an individual, you can make a difference by signing up for numerous free Terracycle Recycling Programs that meet the needs of your specific patterns and sources of waste. For example, this week I signed up for Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Colgate Oral Care, and Clif Bar Energy Bar Wrapper Recycling Programs. I was added to a waitlist and will be informed via email once a spot in these programs becomes available, but in the meantime I will start collecting those sources of waste with the intent of recycling them through Terracycle in the future.

You can make an even greater difference by coordinating community collection boxes at local businesses, schools, or workplaces in order to collect and ship the products more efficiently than on an individual basis. Terracycle even offers helpful resources on how to engage your community in Terracycle Programs. You can also coordinate public drop off points or search for pre-existing drop off locations for certain products.

In addition to recycling opportunities through Terracycle, there are other creative and innovative organizations putting “trash” to good use, like the Appalachian Wildlife Refuge’s mascara wand upcycling program:

As a steadfast non-wearer of makeup, I cannot say that I have done this myself, but a more makeup savvy friend of mine came across this opportunity to re-purpose mascara wands. Specifically, used mascara wands can be cleaned with warm water and soap, placed in Ziploc bags, and mailed to the Appalachian Wildlife Refuge, where they are upcycled and re-purposed for medical care and wound treatment. These mascara wands are useful tools to clean away oil, larvae, fly eggs, mites, infections, mud, and other contaminants from wildlife.

Used wand donations are accepted twice annually, in October and February, and can be sent to:

Appalachian Wild
P.O. Box 1211
Skyland, NC 28776

Or

Wildlife Wands
P.O. Box 1586
Southwick, MA 01077

Check out Appalachian Wildlife Refuge’s website for more information on this upcycling program.

If your local recycling doesn’t accept certain products for recycling and you can’t find a program like Terracycle through which to recycle your waste, consider upcycling your waste into a DIY project. Terracycle offers a page of DIY Project ideas including  jewelry, wallets, garden projects, and holiday ornaments. You can also check out Diply’s 16 Ways You Can Upcycle Your Old Lip Balm Containers for a list of creative ways to reuse lip balm / chapstick containers.

Although I’ve only touched upon a few specific products, I encourage you to take the time to look into upcycling and recycling opportunities for any and all waste you generate in your daily life. With some research and creative thinking, you just may find that many sources of waste in your daily life can in fact be diverted from landfills and be reused or re-purposed into useful and fun creations.

This week as you continue down the path toward greener living, I challenge you to seek out one source of hard-to-recycle waste in your life and either upcycle it in some way, sign up for a Terracycle program, or find some other creative means of re-purposing or recycling your waste. As always, let me know how it goes in the comments section below.

~Sam