Creative Use for Plastic Bags

I took some pictures for this blog while travelling in England and Scandanavia this summer, but did very little blogging from there, so I have a little catching up to do. I saw this clever reuse of plastic shopping bags (what the Brits call "carrier bags") one evening while killing a little time before I went to see a play at the Old Red Lion pub, near the Angel tube station. (Pub theater is great. This place was a nice pub downstairs, with a tiny, tiny theater upstairs. You buy your ticket, get a pint, and when the bell rings to let you know to go upstairs, you bring your pint along. I didn't love the play, but I did enjoy the overall theater experience.) So, an empty storefront window had been artfully filled with crumpled plastic bags, affording privacy to whatever was going on behind the window, I suppose. Of course it's too bad that there are so many plastic bags in the world to begin with, but I liked this clever repurposing of them. There are some movements afoot to ban plastic bags, such as this one in San Francisco. Here is another story about the international movement to get rid of them. I'm all for such bans. Here is another site to get you acquainted with the issue.

Last Week's Treasures from the Trash

I got a few good things out of a neighbor's trash last Tuesday. Here's what I came home with: a bunch of nice, new fake flowers. (Fake flowers are very much not my thing, but my next door neighbor likes them, so I picked them up for her. I do, however, feel a little conflict over this, since the detritus of various fake flowers end up migrating into my back gardens. Oh well - she does lots of nice things for me, so it will be nice to do something she will appreciate.) I also got a bunch of file folders, which I don't need, but oak tag paper is so handy to have around for making tags, etc. I also got a brandy new box of push pins, a nice old pair of scissors (can you have too many scissors? I don't think so), a little plastic tray, a box of pearl costume earrings that I will add to my yard sale, and a small spatula. Not bad for a few moments picking. And, on the same day at another house I got another one of these. So that brings the count of perfectly good, white, plastic, kitchen trash cans to four!

Would you throw this mug away?

I found this very nice, handmade mug in the trash of the old woman who lives across the street from me. It was still wrapped up in what I took to be its original wrapping paper. Maybe someone gave it to her as a gift. Mugs are a standard issue, generic gift. Which made me wonder why she, or some member of her family, didn't just regift it. What a waste to throw it away!

Finding things along the road, too!

I was up in Nottingham, NH last week, visiting my father and other such things. I went out into the woods one day and pulled a few things out of an old dump in the woods, but I left them in a pile by a tree, intending to pick them up with my car later, and then never did get around to getting them. I'm pretty confident that the pile will still be there the next time I go up, when I'll retrieve it and post about that stuff. But, on my way home, walking along the road, I found this dog comb. It is just what I needed. When I came home from England this summer, my dog was in the middle of a major shedding, and I was too cheap to go out and buy a new dog comb, so I used a nice, old wooden comb that I wasn't using anyway. But now I have a real dog comb, so hopefully less of Lu's hair will end up on my couch! We'll see about that, but meanwhile, this little find really does reinforce my view that most things you need are in fact just lying around waiting to be picked up...

A great table straight from the trash

I just got this table out of the trash, just a few doors down from my house. It has a wooden top and the metal base folds up very easily. I will repaint the top, with an oil-based enamel, and make one very small repair to the hardware on the bottom, then I'll have a brandy new, great little table. It will make a perfect addition to my porch, which I am in the middle of painting, and which I'm looking forward to decorating when I'm done. It is just the right size for playing scrabble, which should convince a certain someone (we'll call him Mr. Happy, 'cause he's a pretty upbeat guy) that dragging things out of the trash isn't quite so awful after all...

Freegan: An Alternative Consumerism

My friend Heather just forwarded me this article from The New York Times. Very interesting. Thanks, Heather!

Resisting Temptation to Drag Things from Dumpsters

I recently spent an altogether lovely weekend in Cheltenham Spa, up in the Cotswolds. It was a 'hen party' weekend for my friend the Lynneguist, who is getting married in a couple of weeks. It was a great town, and we spent a lot of time walking around. If I had been at home, I certainly would have retrieved the nice glass door in this skip (the British word for a dumpster): But oh well, hopefully someone else took it home and put it to good use. I see these skips all over the place, much smaller than ours at home.

Relections on Why I Do What I Do (at least what I report on doing here)...

So, being away from my usual life, haunts, and activities makes it a little more difficult to post in my usual way. That is, for the next several weeks I don't expect to drag much stuff out of the trash (I doubt that my hostess would appreciate it!). If I can remember to lug my big old camera along, I will take some pictures of relatively relevant things. But meanwhile, I thought I'd reflect on and write about the general content of this blog in a more abstract, general way. (Trained, and for many years employed, as a professional philosopher who, by definition thinks abstractly, this blog has been a welcome change of pace -- into the particular, the specific.) So, the question is, why do I take things from the trash, a practice that others find distasteful, even embarrassing? One reason is that because stuff in the trash is, well, FREE. I'm frugal, some would say cheap. (Here in the U.K. they say "tight". A British friend of mine likes to say "Tight as a gnat's chuff." Don't ask what a chuff is. But visit this great blog by my friend the Lynneguist to learn about all sorts of British/American linguistic quirks.) Why would I buy something that I can freely take from someone's pile of trash instead? Being raised by New Englanders I was early on taught to value my pennies, and this lesson certainly stuck. So, one reason to take stuff from the trash is simply to save money. I like stuff, especially old, used stuff, and trash day is one easy way to get it. Another reason though, is that waste really, really bothers me. The amount of waste in our society is staggering, and the waste we can observe is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. So, when I see some perfectly usable something out with the garbage, my inclination is to take it home and, well, use it. (Or, if I can't use it, find someone who can.) Every used thing that someone else has discarded (either in the trash or by giving it to a thrift store) that I take home is one less thing in a landfill.

Never Buy Potting Soil Again

This is the new thing I've recently started taking out of the trash: abandoned planters with soil still in them. The big square one has pretty nice potting soil in it, which I'm going to hold on to for the next time I need to repot a plant, or something like that. The other two are going to end up in my compost pile. I've thrown some other abandoned soil in it already. All of which brings me around to pointing out that my compost piles (there are in fact two), are in serious need of expansion...

More Trash to Buy (and cheaper this time)

My friend the Lynneguist just sent me this link to a post on Boing Boing. Here is some more trash you can buy - a smaller and cheaper version of this trash-qua-art that I posted about some time ago. Thanks Lynne!

Great New Found Object Straight from the Trash

I was walking the dog on a trash night, when I spotted this great old column in front of someone's house. (My dog knows it's trash night, because we go out over and over again - he loves trash night almost as much as I do.) At first I thought it was a log, but as soon as I poked it with my foot, I discovered that it was an old column. It was carved from single piece of wood (so, it was a log, once upon a time). It is about 4 feet high, slightly tapered, with a decorative carving along the top. It has some very old white paint on it, and inside you can see the screw-like carving marks. I wonder how old it is? In any case, I think it's just great, and once I get my porch painted later this summer, it will make a great found object decoration. At the end of summer, I'll move it inside.

Why Do People Throw This Stuff Away?

I have to admit: I don't get it. Why would someone throw away something as basically useful and necessary as a kitchen trash can? I found each of these in the trash within just a few houses of where I live, over the course of just a few months. Each time, I assumed that it was broken or cracked, but I went to check it out anyway, because I'm always on the lookout for trash cans in which to pile up my 'green waste' (yard clippings, tree limbs, leaves, etc., that the city turns into compost). But each of these trash cans is fine. I just kept piling them up in my garage, and yesterday I gave them a pretty perfunctory cleaning, and so here they are: 3 perfectly good trash cans. Each one is made by Sterlite, which says something about just how ubiquitous their plastic products are. So, what do you think? Why do people just throw stuff like this away?

Two of My Favorite Things Come Together: Jewelry and Recycling

Check out out this post on Inhabitat, about jewelry made from reclaimed and recycled textiles. I went to the artist's site (you can get there from the Inhabitat post linked to here), but alas, my Spanish is way too rusty to be able to read more than the occasional word... I love the necklaces, though I'm not sure I could really pull off the look.

A Use for Vintage Suitcases: Sidetable w/ Storage

The top suitcase in this photo did come straight out of the trash. Some neighbors were cleaning out an attic when I spied it on top of the dumpster. I asked if I could have it and they gladly handed it to me. (That I didn't get in on the ground floor and get things out of the attic before they were put in the dumpster is a long, sorrowful story...) But the other suitcases I've bought at various thrift stores and garage sales over the last few years. Stacked together they make a cool looking bedside table, and they offer some extra storage space for sheets, towels, etc. And I don't know about you, but I am always in need of extra storage space. (The only thing is that I suggest only using them to store things you don't need very often, since you have to unstack them to gain access. They would work great for holiday decorations, for example.) This is not an original idea, I know, but I think it's good enough to bear repeating.

Friends Helping Friends Get Good Stuff from the Trash

I am visiting friends in Athens, Ohio this week. Yesterday we were sitting in the yard, with the kids (their kids, not my kids) playing in this great sandbox: I asked if Joe had made it, and Julie (my friend Julie, not my sister Julie who I've referred to in these pages before) said that no, a friend in town had called when they spotted it along the road with trash, and they had gone right out to get it. That, and a new cover and bags of sand (replete with shells) from Lowe's, and they had a great new toy in the yard, and a shady spot at that! I love the collectivity of this: not just the actual saving of a thing from the trash, but one friend calling another to tell them about the great thing waiting to be rescued.

Another Mirror Saved from the Trash

I recently posted about a very nice mirror that I found in the trash and rescued. But, alas, I was too far from home to save it for myself, though I am happy to have been able to save it for someone else, even if I'm not sure quite who that someone is. Anyway, that reminded me, after I had gotten home, that this mirror was also rescued from the trash: I retrieved the very nice frame, with a gilt inner edge that I don't think quite shows up in the photo, from the attic of the Molly Root House, which the college I teach at had recently bought and was cleaning out. A little while later I came across a large mirror which had once been attached to a vanity or dresser (at least that was my best educated guess) in the trash a few houses down from my last apartment. So, for $10 I had the mirror cut down and fixed inside the frame by a local glass company - a pretty good deal, I think. The mirror is pretty heavy, so I don't want to try to hang it on the wall myself, but I actually like it leaning up against my bedroom wall anyway.

Manga Man - Someone Else's Treasure

So, here is a great piece of funky art which my friends Lynne and Phil rescued from the trash outside this store on Orange Row in Brighton, UK. They assume that the store had decided to do some redecorating, and luckily they were there to take this home. It is now on an outside door of their flat. It was very helpful when I was visiting recently, and needed to be sure, instantly, that I was back at the right place!

Wherever I Go, I Find Treasures!

I've just come back from a week in England, where I had a great time. The weather was very warm and sunny, and I had a lovely time visiting with friends in London and Brighton, and then a very productive and interesting conference at Oxford, where I presented a version of this paper. One evening, while walking home with the Lynneguist and her soon-to-be-husband from a great dinner of Bangers and Mash at a pub which specializied in about a dozen kinds of sausage, including vegetarian varieties, and at least half a dozen mashed potatoes and gravies, I spied this mirror leaning up against a dumpster: I dutifully carried it back to their home (with help - thanks!), where I was able to inspect it a bit more carefully than I could out on the dark street. It is very nice. It is a pinkish amber color, with a scalloped edge, and virtually ready to hang (it just needs some wire attached to the back). When I left it with them it was in need of a good cleaning, and perhaps a scraping with a razor blade to remove some relatively recalcitrant dirt that you can see on left. But other than that, it really is a lovely mirror, and I was tempted to drag it all the way home myself. (But it's rather heavy, so the idea of carrying it up to Oxford and then out to Heathrow dissuaded me.) They weren't sure whether they would be able to find a spot for it in their home, but I left it in their care assured that if they couldn't use it they would find someone who could. So, even when I'm away from home, I can still manage to remain true to myself!

New York City Garbage as Art!

I was just sorting through and trying to organize all the sites that I've bookmarked in the past few months, and I came across
this article about Justin Gignac
who collects NYC garbage and packages it as art. (I no longer remember who sent me this link, but thanks!) What he is doing is very cool on many fronts: he's recycling, he's stretching our concept of 'art', he's calling attention to how much stuff gets thrown out (especially in NYC), and to boot he is making money doing it! I love it. You can
check out his site here.

What Treasures Have You Saved from the Trash???

Okay, so now that you've seen some of the stuff that I've found in the trash, I'd love to see your reclaimed treasures. What's the best thing you've ever found in the trash? Send me a picture and description of what you've found (the better the story the better), so I can share your finds with others (just click on "Contact Celeste" on the left to email me).