Ecologue

Wastehacks [wāst-haks] pl. noun – any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that reduces waste in all walks of life.

This term, Campus Recycling and the Waste Watchers will share with you easy Wastehacks so you don’t waste time or materials.

Reuse Wastehacks

It’s easy to forget how long of a life our products have. Yet despite their long lifespan, our society uses a lot of stuff. According to the EPA, 32 million tons of plastic waste was generated in 2012. Meanwhile, we use more than 69 million tons of paper and paperboard each year. You can see how this adds up.

While 9% and 65% of our plastic and paper products respectively are recycled in the US, many of these items were capable of being used for other purposes. Today’s Wastehacks will provide creative ways to reuse those everyday products:

• Use old papers and assignments as scratch paper
• Wrap postal packages or cover textbooks in the brown paper bags that you’ve collected
• Use old magazines to create handmade cards and postcards
• Cut up old cards to use as gift tags
• Tear any letter-sized papers into quarters. Keep these quarters around whenever you need to write a quick note (Great for spam mail!)
• Reuse aluminum foil as many times as possible
• Become a hipster: Wash out jars and use them as drinking containers
• Reuse containers for other things, liking store bulk items when shopping.
• Use plastic bags as a makeshift, rainproof sleeve for laptops or binders.

There are a nearly unlimited number of ways to reuse your stuff. Comment with your own Wastehacks!

“Wastehacks” is a weekly blog series where we share quick waste reduction tips. Tune in every Monday this term for more.