Reuse! Recycle! Repeat!

A couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning up, and I gathered some things to toss in the blue recycle bin, which gets picked up every other Monday

Recyclables that I’m still reluctant to get rid of

(except, of course, for Monday holidays, when the alternate pickup day is Wednesday). There’s always the accumulated newspapers, junk mail, and the envelopes, etc. from the real mail. There was also a shoe box, a paper pulp egg carton, and some cardboard tubes from paper towels and wrapping paper and tape.

I looked through *all* the photo albums, and, astonishingly, this is the only photo of a school project that I can find. This one is for a book report. The main character (some kind of animal) wanted to be a duck and so made himself a duck costume. Kevin thought that a duck costume would be a fine book report project. You can’t see his feet, which I think have orange duck feet on top of them. Hands and feet and face were the costume elements of the story’s main character. Kevin’s duck mask is paper mache (recycled newspaper). The bill is, of course, crafted from cardboard paper towel tubes.

With great reluctance, I tossed into the bin (along with the paper stuff) the box, the carton and the tubes. There was a time when I hoarded those things. My sons are forty-two and thirty-seven. Maybe elementary school has changed in the intervening years, but, time was when I wouldn’t throw away a shoe box for anything. Regularly, school assignments included dioramas and projects of one kind or another, which really needed some sort of cardboard-ish base, or wall, or lid, or, whatever.

Add to that the things I plan for teaching preschoolers at church (and in years past, classes at the community college), and I just never threw away those things that might become an integral part of some learning experience.

We have a good-sized bin at church that’s full of those cardboard tubes. I check it every now and then, to see if it’s getting low. If so, then I bring from home those tubes as they come available, until the bin’s full again.

Several months ago, a friend (who for years was a children’s minister at a couple of churches) called me. She’d been buying eggs from a local farm that produced organic eggs. “I have some of those great papery/cardboard cartons. Should I bring them to church for the resource room?”

“Actually,” I said. “There’s a stack of them there, already. I think there’s room for one or two more on the shelf where they are. But, until some more of them get used up, we don’t need too many more than what’s already there.”

“I just hate to toss them out,” she said, remembering all the times she wanted and needed one, and didn’t have it.

“I know,” I said. “I feel that same way about cardboard shoe boxes. Twelve years of having someone in elementary school has conditioned me to think I need to hang on to them. Even when I know I probably don’t.”

So, I get rid of shoe boxes. A few years ago, Jeremy was visiting. As he walked into the house, he passed the recycle bin (located conveniently by the door, so I just have to lean out and toss stuff in). He glanced in and then looked at me, shocked.

“There’s a shoe box in there!” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’re getting rid of a shoe box.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s a hard thing to do.”

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it

the world and its inhabitants too.

Because God is the one who established it on the seas;

    God set it firmly on the waters.

Psalm 24:1,2 (Common English Edition)

Yes, we recycle. We compost. I will remove soft drink cans from the trash (well, depending on where I am) and bring them home to put in the blue bin. I really am trying to be a good earth citizen in God’s good world. Meanwhile, Jeremy, I was able to find a way to re-use a wonderful shoe box.