There was a time when it wasn’t that easy being green.
Ask Kermit.
Now, not only is green a top trending color, it’s a standard for conducting business properly and more effectively, both personally and professionally.
Ask your neighbor.
You know, the one that pulls out of the driveway and strains his neck to peer inside your recycling bin. I put the wine bottles on the bottom. They function like extra packing material, making the bin look like it’s brimming with the good stuff I put on top.
It’s all about great presentation…………….Mr. Nosey.
Ask your customers.
Not surprisingly, you’ll find that quite a few of them embrace green, and love you because you do too.
But this isn’t a blog about being green.
I just had an overwhelming desire to link to a Kermit video.
This is about what you do with an object when it outlives its usefulness.
It could be anything.
If it’s just garbage, it gets tossed.
If it’s a fax machine, it might sit idle in the corner of the copy room until someone dusts it off and sends it to the Smithsonian.
If it’s a piece of furniture that doesn’t quite fit with the new decor, it goes into the basement.
If it’s something other than a physical object-an outmoded idea, philosophy, or practice-the process is similar.
The lifecycle for exercise equipment is that it: gets used once, becomes a convenient clothes hanger, goes on Craigslist for way more than anyone would pay, ends up on the curb and gets whisked away by the hunters and gatherers (those guys are fascinating).
We send plastic, paper, glass and cardboard away to some mysterious place that magically turns all of those things into something wonderful:
Paper becomes recycled…….paper.
Plastic becomes recycled…….plastic.
Cardboard becomes shredded wheat.
That, most of that, is downcycling. Those objects that don’t end up in a landfill escape extinction, but become something less than what they were.
That’s fairly unimaginative.
What about upcycling? Is there anything that can’t be improved upon?
Granted, there’s no hope for banana peels, fax machines or exercise equipment, but what about the rest?
With a bit of creativity, the possibilities are endless.
Let’s start simple.
Yankee Candles.
They come in a jar, with a lid.
Pick the right scent, and it’s heaven (pick the wrong one, and it’s hours of ick).
Enjoy it. When you’ve burned it down to the absolute bottom, what do you have? A waxy, candle wick-blackened jar, but a wonderful experience and a great opportunity.
Recycle the jar and save the lid.
Cut the plastic seal off the lid, be careful, turn it upside down, put a votive inside…..heaven, again.
Want to explore more upcycling ideas?
Maybe we can start with the table that these candles are sitting on.
It used to be a piano bench.
