Reuse and Remake: Introduction

Maddi Spletter

Lab 4

Introduction

Reuse and Remake

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” is an idiom that most people know. However, many people are not aware of how true this statement is. A person’s trash can really be turned into treasure just by reusing different items, such as cans and glass bottles. Although the amount of time turns people away from the idea; it is just one solution to deal with the trash we accumulate. This project will deal with making new homemade items out of things that normally are thrown away or found in a landfill.

America is a big consumer society. As a result, we generate a lot of trash. In the year of 2010, “Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash.” (http://www.epa.gov 2011) Most Americans produce 4.43 pounds of waste per day. This is a lot of trash just for one country. However, imagine the world at this level of discarding trash. There is no place to put it, especially given the current world population. To reduce this, more people must start to recycle or reuse items. For example, a college student could reuse a Snapple bottle to store other liquids. They could buy a gallon of milk and split it with other people, putting their portion in a Snapple bottle. Another everyday item people could reuse could be old t-shirts by cutting them and turning them into rags. They are great for working in the garage and having a few extra rags to help with cleaning.

The reason this is so important is trash and recycling is an everyday thing people deal with. They have to decide whether to recycle or to throw used items in the trash. Most likely, people chose to throw things in the trash. One of the main explanations for this is that recycling seems incontinent for people unless the recycling bin is right in front of them. More people recycle when it is more convenient. (Ludwig, Gray, and Rowel 1998) There are also other inconveniences in dealing with recycling. “The inconvenience involved in storing and transporting recyclables, as well as lack of knowledge about how to recycle, also inhibit recycling.” (Derksen, and Gartrel 1993) However recycling is not only throwing things into a bin. It also can involve making trash into entirely new things. Put a new spin on trash can help find new ideas in what to do with all the items we throw away, as stated earlier. Others are thought only to belong in the recycling bin. This project will hopefully bring interest into a different world of reuse.

There are many ideas to try, however; the main concentration in this project is plastic bags. Plastic bags are seen as a menace, and people feel different about what to do with them. Most are just thrown into the trash after they are used. Other people do reuse them for trash containers. “In our everyday life with plastic bags their movement through different categories, from container to rubbish, generates different attitudes and modes of relating” (Hawkins 2001) There are also the new efforts in recycling plastic bags. People also feel different about that too. The article, “Doing away with plastic shopping bags: international patterns of norm emergence and policy implementation” by Jennifer Clappa and Linda Swanston, points out that recycling plastic bags actually is a loss because it takes more to recycle the bag than to make more. With these thoughts in mind, there is another outlet that these two theories do not have. That is the idea of making the bags into new things. These two articles seem to address only two sides of the issue. However, they never bring up any ideas in how to reuse the items in new ways other than melting the items to mold them into new things.

This new idea for plastic bags is making a bag out of plastic bags. The bags are made into a purse that is a lot sturdier than just one plastic bag.one simple idea to start off with, however, was to reuse them as garbage bags. However, making a bag out of plastic bags seemed more interesting. The original pattern is from friend’s grandma. With knowing how to knit the idea to knit a bag also became an option. Both are started and will be finished by the end. This project requires the person making the bag to not only crochet or knit the purse but also make the “string or yarn.” Making the string is the most difficult part because it involves cutting up bags, tying the strips together, twisting them, and rolling the string into a ball. It also requires a lot of bags to manage a decent sized bag. Nevertheless, this is a good aspect of using up a lot of the plastic bags that would end up being thrown out.

The second part of the project is making some jewelry from cans and some bottle caps. This would include one pair of earrings and a necklace. If time allows, there will be more made. The types of cans that will be used include Mountain Dew, Peace Tea, and Pepsi. There also will be some earrings made out of Snapple bottle caps and coke bottle caps. Bottle cap jewelry has become a popular trend. One of my teachers actually wears Starbuck earrings made from the Frappuccino bottle caps.

Next, to make will be a cardboard Christmas tree. With a huge pile of cracker boxes, there had to be some craft to make out of them. Thanks to Andrea Kraemer in my lab, they now will be made into a cardboard Christmas tree. In trying to find designs, they all seemed very simple. (http://www.decodir.com/wp-content/uploads//2009/11/cardboard-christmas-tree-decorating-ideas.jpg ) However, for the project they needed to be more original. The idea then came to layer the boxes instead of having to cut out the design. The base of the tree will be a Snapple jug. For ornaments, they will be made from plastic bottles and extra cardboard. It will be a fun project and also be just in time for the holidays.

The last part of the project is to share other ideas. With the time restrains and lack of other types of material, many projects that have been proposed cannot be made. There also many sights with different ideas that can be done. For example, there is http://www.etsy.com, a place where people can buy and sell homemade items. This site is also a great place to get ideas and to see what other people have thought of. Even just searching things that are reused on the internet brings up many different things that are made out of trash or other recyclable items. For instance, people have made boots out of plastic bags. (http://www.treehugger.com/style/seriously-cool-boots-from-recycled-plastic-bags.html ) They actually look cute and useable. There are so many different ideas that people can see that this project has not even hit the tip of the iceberg.

When starting this project, it was never intended to be this creative. Also I never knew that so many items could be reused in all these different ways. Some are very creative. Others are very simple. However the main point of this project is to inspire other people to find other ways to reuse items that are different and fun. Hopefully, my items will spark someone’s curiosity.

Resources:

“Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2010.” US EPA. United State Environmental Protection Agency, Nov 2011. Web. 19 Nov 2011. <http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/msw_2010_factsheet.pdf>.

Ludwig, Timothy D., Timothy W. Gray, and Allison Rowel. “Increasing Recycling in Academic Buildings: A Systematic Replication .” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 4 (1998): 683-86. Ncbi. Web. 21 Nov 2011. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1284165/pdf/jaba003100400683.pdf>.

Derksen, Linda, and John Gartrel. “The Social Context of Recycling .” American Sociological Review 58.3 (1993): 434-42. JSTOR. Web. 21 Nov 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2095910>.

Hawkins, Gay. “Plastic bags: Living with rubbish.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 4.1 (2001): 5-23. Sage Journals Online. Web. 20 Nov 2011. <http://ics.sagepub.com/content/4/1/5.full.pdf html>

Clappa, Jennifer, and Linda Swanston. “Doing away with plastic shopping bags: international patterns of norm emergence and policy implementation.” Environmental Politics 18.3 (2009): 315-32. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 20 Nov 2011. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644010902823717>