#upcycling-glass-jars

#upcycling-glass-jars

Shredded paper is especially difficult to recycle, so many programs will not accept it. Shredding accelerates fiber shortening and lowers the paper grade from high-grade to mixed-grade. Mixed-grade paper is still recyclable, but it ends up baled and processed into products like paper towels and packing paper.

The results? They picked out 26 cleaning solutions, calling them their favorites. From tried-and-true staples to brand-new discoveries, see below for our top picks.

Rather than tossing or recycling those empty take-out containers, why not give them another purpose and use them for pantry storage? As she revealed on her blog, Stewart uses her leftover deli containers to store all sorts of dry goods in her pantry, like salt, pepper, and other spices, which keeps her pantry in her farm in upstate New York tidy and organized.

According to the UN's Global E-waste Monitor 2024, a record 62 million metric tons of electronic waste was generated worldwide in 2022, an 82% increase since 2010. E-waste is projected to reach 82 million metric tons by 2030. In the U.S. alone, roughly 8 million tons of e-waste is discarded each year.

If you open your kitchen cabinets and want to run away screaming from the tumbling and entropic heap of half-used packages - and you're starting to consider dropping a whole paycheck at The Container Store to finally fix your life (for real this time) - Wait! Let us share with you a far cheaper and more whimsical solution: vintage tea tins.

Households are pledging not to buy anything new in 2026 - not just in the kitchen space. This movement, aimed toward curbing consumerism, stems from multiple causes, including the rising prices of products (and living, more broadly) and the desire to cut back on impulse spending, reduce waste, and challenge the notion that new products are superior to used.

Even if you bring home as few bags as possible - using reusable bags, carrying purchases home with your own two hands - soft plastics sill accumulate. I certainly have a collection with one flimsy plastic sack filled with dozens or hundreds of others. I plan to do something with it... eventually. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of options for what to do with those soft plastics, as most recycling facilities can't accept them.

Just like that coffee cup, eyewear is a complex fusion of materials. Metal hinges are screwed into polymer frames, which hold chemically-coated lenses. This mix of metals, plastics, and coatings means standard sorting machines cannot process them. As a result, they are rejected as contamination and sent directly to landfills, where they contribute to non-biodegradable waste. Unlike a disposable paper cup, however, a pair of sunglasses is built for durability. Its high-quality components make it a perfect candidate for repair, reuse, or reinvention.

When you think about building a house, what materials come to mind? Brick, wood and metal all come to mind; there are also some very distinctive glass houses out there. (Even if their occupants should refrain from throwing stones - though honestly, that's a good tip for indoor living in general.) A group of MIT researchers have come up with a very different way of making buildings, and it's one that also addresses an ongoing waste issue."We've estimated that the world needs about 1 billion new homes by 2050. If we try to make that many homes using wood, we would need to clear-cut the equivalent of the Amazon rainforest three times over," explained AJ Perez, who conducts his research in the MIT Office of Innovation. The title of a paper written by Perez and his colleagues - "Design, Manufacture and Testing of Structural Trusses Using Additively Manufactured Polymer Composites" - gives a sense of the solution that they have in mind.

It's likely that you've encountered recycled glass countertops without realizing it. They're far from the hippie-style broken-glass mosaic art of yesteryear, instead presenting as sleek, highly polished, professional slabs with intriguing bits of confetti-style color trapped inside. That's the recovered glass bits set into a binding material such as resin, cement, or concrete, and then smoothly polished so that the composite surface feels like stone.

Europe's supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum. Brands using plastic packaging from Kraft's Heinz Beanz to Mondelez's Philadelphia use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco. The Saudi state-owned holding opposes production cuts under the UN plastic treaty and is the world's largest corporate greenhouse-gas emitter (over 70m tonnes up to 2023).

We can make changes to reduce our waste by precycling when we shop, reducing what we purchase, reusing items to get the most use out of them, and recycling when possible. But when we have items to throw away, please dispose of trash responsibly and don't litter. Let's reduce our waste and clean up our planet. It's our only home.

Black plastic gets its color from carbon black pigment and is commonly used in food containers, such as meat or produce trays and take-out containers, as well as disposable coffee lids, plastic bags, and hard plastic items like DVD cases and planters. While plastic is one of the categories of things that we are encouraged to recycle - when we can't reuse or repurpose it - not all black plastic items can be recycled.