Putting the Joy in Recycling
Bag of Joy News – May 2017
New from Bag of Joy
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| "5" - mixed media artwork |
One of the passions of my life is mixed media
art. Fortunately I have many opportunities to apply my skills and creativity to
this medium, because as a well-known recycler I often receive odds ‘n’ ends of
things that no one else wants. Let me give you an example. A good friend makes
small items in his woodworking shop. It’s a hobby. One project left him with
dozens of small, round wooden “plugs” for which he had no use. He personally
delivered them to me and I had a huge grin on my face when he did. What am I
going to do with them? I have no idea right now but you can bet they’re headed
for something wonderful.
Here is a finished piece made from a
variety of materials donated and found. “5” uses old wrapping paper, fabric offcuts,
teabag, old dictionary text, ribbon craps, fibers, used tin foil, netting, upholstery fabric samples and
more.
Bag of the Month
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| Hostess Helpers are handy casserole carriers |
Not exactly a bag although it carries stuff,
has sides and handles… well, okay it’s a bag! My Hostess Helpers are classy
casserole (or pie plate, cake tin, sushi platter…) carriers made of all-new,
upcycled upholstery samples.
The inside panels are lightly padded to keep the heat - or cold - in, and there's a hidden slide-out cutting board to provide a firm base. The sturdy handles make sure your delicious creation gets there safely.
Some Hostess Helpers (like the one in the photo) come with a spreader knife or ladle.
Bags in Books
A monthly contest for readers
Can you identify the book this passage was
taken from?
“The porter woke him up when the train
reached Ilium. Billy staggered off with his duffel bag, and then he stood on
the station platform next to the porter, trying to wake up.”
The first person to correctly name the book
title will win a gift from the Bag of Joy collection. Just make a comment below
or send me an answer through any of the contacts listed. If you live off-island
and are the first to answer correctly, I’ll be happy to mail your gift. You must claim your prize before the end of the month.
Yes we have a winner in our April contest! Jett
Robidoux correctly identified "The Sex Lives of Cannibals" by J. Maarten Troost.
Welcome to the Recycling Department! Can I help you?
Compost
From the New York Times
by Kim Severson
EVERETT, Wash. — The most bedeviling problem
for the company that turns most of the Puget Sound region’s kitchen waste into
compost is on a piece of fruit. Almost every piece of fruit.
It’s that little sticker that tells you
whether the fruit, and many kinds of vegetables, are organic, where they came
from and which code a supermarket cashier should punch into the cash register.
At Cedar Grove Composting, which every year turns about 115,000 tons of food and other
waste collected from restaurants and home kitchens into dark compost for both
gardens and larger construction projects, those stickers are a huge headache.
Hunks of wood, ham bones, coffee cups, greasy pizza boxes and oyster shells all
go through the system with ease. Even forks aren’t a problem, except when
Seattle restaurant owners ask to sort through the waste to collect cutlery that
may have been tossed. (The mass of mangled metal rejects that have been pulled
from the pile makes it clear such a request will be met with disappointment.)
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| Remove the labels for composting. |
But those stickers? “They’re so little we
just can’t sift them out,” said Stephan Banchero III, the vice president of
Cedar Grove. “They end up popping out in people’s gardens. It’s really
annoying.”
Cedar Grove is one of a growing number of
companies that aim to get food out of landfills. Almost 20 percent, or 30
million tons, of what goes into the dump comes from what we eat, or more
precisely what we don’t eat.
Cities like Seattle, San Francisco and
Portland, Ore., mandate that all residents compost
food waste, and more than 150 other
municipalities have food-composting programs. New York is working on it, with a
small pilot program that collects food waste from some public schools and less
than 200,000 residents. Cedar Grove, whose roots go back to Italian immigrants
who began collecting Seattle’s garbage in 1938, drives trucks through the vast
Microsoft campus collecting food and other compostable material. Its contracts
include the stadiums of the Mariners and Seahawks. The company has even gotten into the
container game, producing cups, cutlery and food containers that can be turned
into compost, given a little air, heat and time.
But those stickers are a problem.
In what seems something of a fool’s errand,
the company distributes sheets that look like Bingo cards. Fill one with 20
fruit stickers, and you get a free bag of compost. So far, they’ve given away
about 800 bags. Recently, one went to Juanita Chase, 54, of
Lynnwood, Wash. At first, she collected the stickers because she just wanted a
free bag of compost. When she learned the stickers were such a problem, she
became a little evangelical about it.
Now, she peels the stickers off fruit and
tells her co-workers and friends to do the same. “It really got me thinking
about how much work it is putting all those stickers on in the first place,”
she said. “Maybe we need to think about that, too.”
Recycling
Criminal recycling
A Michigan man has admitted he redeemed
deposits for at least 10,000 non-refundable bottles purchased in Indiana,
effectively stealing money from Michigan’s deposit program. In a news
release, Michigan’s attorney general writes that
70-year-old John Woodfill pleaded guilty to redeeming the ineligible bottles,
will forfeit his van and trailer used in the scam and owes $400,000 in
restitution to the state.
Recycled News you can use
The Canadian province of Saskatchewan is about to apply the beverage
container deposit law to milk and milk product containers – not all of them but
enough that residents need to pay attention.
Recycle this thought
Recycling is an area where jobs could be created at low cost. Green collar workers. That's not very sexy. - Geoff MulganThis is my final Bag of Joy blog!
Have you read this far? Well, there’s more
news for my regular readers. First, my Shopify store is closed; products may be purchased in person or through the Facebook or email channels.
And, beginning next month this blog will morph into my
annual travel blog. If you have followed my “Ranch Life and Road Trips” blog each summer, you know that we make my family’s ranch our
headquarters. Jim and I stay in my parents’ original house which we have
furnished and finished as our second home. Big change this year: Jim will not
be going with me to Canada. He has too much work to do on Maui, and a
97-year-old mother in our cottage - lots of responsibilities to keep him
on-island. So, I won’t be doing a 3,000-mile road trip without him, but I will
be fishing, touring local areas, fishing, adding touches to our home, fishing
and… stay tuned to find out.
Contact information
Email: joyofrecycling@gmail.com
Phone: 808-572-6303
