Showing posts with label one small change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one small change. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

What to do with junk mail

Hip Mountain Mama has a great challenge going on right now - One Small Change. The idea is that each month, starting in January, you make one small environmental change, leading up to Earth Day in April. Great! But what do I begin with? We've cut our weekly trash production in half, I make all of my own cleansers, use cloth napkins, have energy efficient bulbs, and all of the typical first green changes. We buy all organic foods, make pretty much everything from scratch, and even make my own herbal remedies, so I had to think for awhile... and then it came to me - junk mail! What could I do with junk mail, besides recycling? Make a book, of course! I've made three to date, one which will be a tutorial, but let's begin with my favorite - the envelope book.

Normally, the junk mail goes straight into the recycling bin, but with this project, I saved it all for the first week. I was amazed at how many envelopes I received. Not just from bills (almost all of mine are electronic now), but from magazine and credit card offers, mass mailings and more. Letter sized paper is easy to work with, but what do you do with envelopes? For this little book, I simply folded them in half, added a scrapbook paper scrap for a cover, and stapled. A few micron pens and scrap pieces of paper later, we have a book of wisdom gleaned from instruction manuals and warning tags.