Recycling

Recycling is important. And it costs money. I prefer to re-use when I can. Now, it's tough to re-use bottles and cans...but I have found a way. My favorite re-useable good is the wooden pallet. I have found a plethora of uses for these wooden atrocities. I will now tell the tale.

First of all - If you have a bag full of cans, please understand that by cutting out the entire opening of the can, one can create an appropriate domicile for small song birds...just simply staple it to the underside of a piece of small flat food, and attach it to a tree. Proble solved. You could have 200 birdhouses n your property in a matter of hours. But that's overkill. Spend the $10 in gas and go get $3.25 for bag of cans, if you prefer.

Back to pallets. Wooden pallets were created years ago when the age of containerization was ushered in...these things can handle up to a ton of weight, and are easily moveable by fork lifts, and less moveable, but moveable nonetheless, by pallet jacks. The Eastern 4-H Center receives shipments on pallets. Where most business discard, stack, or burn their pallets, we see them as free lumber. I have pulled the wood to construct birdhouses and other wildlife-favorable devices, yet the greates idea ever is the hangin wall shelf. Or the coffee table. Just pull the bottom boards away, fasten four legs and boom. The other night, Charles, our maintenance supervisor and I brought my coffee table concoction to fruition. Folks wondered of it would be stable and strong...

It held me, my 40 pound dumb bells, and a cup of coffee. It didn't budge. Some of the gaps in the top surface had to filled in with wood from other pallets to create a closed top (so the TV remote and National Geographics would fall through), but it made for a beautiful, weathered coffee table that will probably last as long as the staff house does. The rugged appearance might be "man-cave chic", but it was virtually free. Sure, the cost of the pallet was covered in the freighting charge, and the 25 or so screw cost about a dime a piece...but we could have burned the pallet, or just stored it to rot.

There are over 2 billion pallets in use right the minute in the U.S. That's a lot of coffee tables. Someone much more entrepreneurial than me will start a company peddling wares made of discarded pallets. They'll make millions of dollars and tables. But I'll never buy one...I can do it myself. With the abundance of wash-up after Tropical Storm Ida, theres a trove of goodies just waiting to be re-used and re-made. Speaking 0f, a sailboat washed up on our shores yesterday. I can't use that, though. It belongs to someone, and it survived the storm. lucky folks! The story of the craft has been on the radio. It'll certainly find space in the town paper, too. The crew was rescued, successfully, from the craft near the m outh of the Alligator River...glad to know they are OK.

Nevertheless, we at the Center re-use printer paper, pallets, cans, bottles, for all types of projects. You should try, too...

Enjoy the day...