Excited about Composting

I'm really excited about a new program that is coming to our area in the spring.  There will be a separate composting bin with our regular garbage pickup.  We'll simply have to save our organic waste in a separate container, and then it will be taken to a recycling centre. This is great news for me, since I don't compost, I barely garden, but I always feel like it's such a waste when I'm tossing veggie peelings, coffee grounds, etc. into the regular garbage.

Here's a bit of the news article from our local paper.

"The winners are the environment and taxpayers. The program will turn people’s kitchen and garden scraps into compost, while at the same time diverting the materials from landfills.  The price of tipping rubbish into these dumps is about to increase significantly over the next few years.  They are to rise from the current fee of $97 per tonne to $182 per tonne by 2015.  By diverting food scraps from the waste stream, the waste disposal costs will be reduced significantly as the cost for processing organics is considerably lower.  This year alone, the program will save Township taxpayers between $40,000 and $106,000."

 
Saving money, repurposing garbage, less waste in the landfill.  It just requires a simple change in garbage habits for me.  Totally do-able!

Daily Declutter Challenge #11 - Medicine Cupboard & Repurposing Boxes!

I'm pretty late to the whole repurposing party.  I'll admit, I was feeling pretty smug about all the recycling that I was doing.  I faithfully flattened all my cardboard into an offering acceptable to the recycling gods that come by every week.  I rinsed my cans, plastic containers, & glass bottles and stuffed as much newspaper and paper items as I could into the bag.

But really, deep down, I just was giving my stuff for someone else to deal with.

But I'm starting to wake up to the fact that I can give something new life without it having to go through all the steps at a recycling plant.  And I don't HAVE to buy something to meet my needs.  I usually can repurpose something at home!

This started when I was staring at my medicine shelf yesterday, thinking, "I really need to declutter & organize that shelf.  But I can't do it till I can head to the dollar store and buy some sort of baskets.  My little one is sick and I don't really want to drag her out...."

Not a great cupboard to have when you have a child with a chronic illness...

Then I gave my head a shake and thought, "Do I really NEED to buy some cutesy container to store medicine?  Surely, I can find something around home!"

I dug around in my recycle bin and found some cereal boxes.  Which led me to this this awesome link!  I know this isn't rocket science, and others have been doing this since the invention of the cardboard box, but I never, ever thought of it.  What can I say?  Thank goodness for google.

It's perfect!  You can cut the box down to any height you want and have custom boxes perfect for your organizing needs.  So I cut down three boxes for the medicines, covered them with some contact paper I had and voila!

I'm not crafty & artistic, so they don't look like Martha Stewart's boxes, but they work!

As I was going through the medicines, I was able to get rid of a Cepacol box that was just PERFECT for my iPod charger that was laying around in my desk drawer.

I did all this organizing in the time it took for my sickie girl to take her nebulizing treatment while she watched Blues Clues.  Bit by bit, every day, my home and life is getting more manageable.

Do you have any great repurposing ideas?  I'd love to hear what you've done!