Reusing and recycling - a trail of great ideas

Few of us have reached the point of buying nothing at all - complete self sufficiency. We will never be self-sufficient here and I'm not aiming for that, but I am very serious about self-reliance, reducing what we buy and reusing and recycling what we own. I have written about this subject many times but the message needs to be constantly reinforced - to myself as much as anyone else. This is where we can make a big contribution towards waste reduction, and therefore the flow-on affects of less air, water and land pollution and fewer rubbish dumps emitting invisible gasses in our own local communities. Some of us here believe global warming is a real concern, some don't, but most people would agree that sensible and correct waste disposal is everyone's responsibility.

Before we go anywhere near the subject of reusing and recycling, our first aim should be to reduce the number of products we buy and bring home, and the amount of packaging on those products. Almost all packaging goes straight to the rubbish bin. Reducing what we buy makes sense on so many levels - we save money, we have less to care for, we don't get caught up in fashion and fads and simply by not bringing more into our homes, we reduce pollution that will result from it. I know that I am responsible for everything I buy, but I always try to remember that I'm also responsible for the packaging that comes with it. It's easy enough to think that paper, plastic, cardboard and polystyrene - all common packaging materials - can be compressed and sent to the dump with our rubbish. However, just sending it there doesn't mean the materials magically disappear. They will go there and depending on what it is, if it is a natural material or a synthetic one, it will increase the size of your local landfill and add more gasses to your local area. Just sending it to the dump doesn't get rid of the problem, it just moves it from one location to another.

Don't start me off on jar recycling. I think it's the ultimate madness to package so many products in one-use glass jars. I recycle glass jam jars and use them for homemade jams, and Cornwell's vinegar bottles for my cordials and vinegars.

This is an old meat safe - made originally to store meat in, before the days of refrigeration. I found this one at a second hand shop and after a good scrubbing now use it to store my bread and scones. Here is a step-by-step guide to making a meat safe from wood and wire. Recycled wood, of course.

A reused old spice and herb rack serves us well now to store Hanno's pills, vitamins, emu oil and tea tree oil.

I wonder if you recognise this.  It's our old satellite dish, drilled to create drainage holes and planted with succulents. It's now sitting on top of that tree stump we created when the old camphor laurel was cut down.

In the backyard, we're using an old stone bird bath top as a water container for the chooks. It's on the ground, just near their favourite summer resting place, so they can stand in it if they get too hot in summer.

This is our chook house. Apart from the concrete floor and the roosts, the entire structure and nesting boxes were made with recycled materials. That includes the guttering on the roof and down-pipe that allows us to collect rainwater from the roof.

This plastic container was recycled from being a one-use strawberry punnet to being a seed box for some of my heirloom tomato seedlings. It already contained ample drainage holes and when I first planted the seeds, I used the top of the box to create a propagation-greenhouse box. Now the seedlings are up and growing, the top remains open.

Hanno made this garden seat, and it's brother which sits on the front verandah, after finding them in a decayed state sitting on the footpath, waiting to be picked up by the council dump truck. He stripped off the old timbers, sanded back the metal, primed and painted them, put on recycled boards and sealed the entire bench. Now it's sitting in front of the elder tree looking into the vegetable garden. It's the perfect place to sit in the early morning or late afternoon.

The garden is the place to find recycled steel reinforcement grids now used for climbing frames.

These steel star pickets have been reused for hundreds of tasks over the years. Now they're rammed into the earth at the corners of each garden bed to prevent the hose being dragged over the beds.

And here we have the ultimate in food recycling - the worm farm.

We're always working on reducing our waste, sometimes we're more successful at it than at other times but recycling and reusing are built into our lives now and are a part of what we do. Before anything is "thrown away" in the rubbish bin, we think if it can be reused for another purpose. Often the answer is yes.

I like seeing photos of the ways other people deal with their "rubbish" and seeing a photo often makes me remember it better than just reading about it. I particularly love seeing photos of ingenious ideas that make me think: "I wish I'd thought of that!" or "What a great idea!".  So I decided to start the ball rolling on this and show a few of the things we're doing here to reuse and recycle rather than send our rubbish to land fill. I hope you will add your own photos on your blog and link to here. If you add your link in your comment, I'm am absolutely sure that we can build a very useful and motivational trail of reusing and recycling ideas that have the power to change how people deal with their rubbish.

I hope you involve yourself with this. I know when I see great ideas being implemented in everyday homes, it makes me believe I can do it too. By sharing our photos and the idea of recycling and reusing, we recognise it as being important  enough to think about, talk about and do, not just today and tomorrow, but as a permanent part of our simple lives. These small steps are what make a difference.