STORAGE TIPS YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO MISS

Say the word “plastic” these days and you will elicit a variety of responses. Not so long-ago plastics were thought to be an amazing venture into the future. The first man-made plastic was patented by Alexander Parkes in 1856. It was made from cellulose, treated with nitric acid, dissolved in alcohol, hardened and molded with heat. It was revolutionary.

IN MEDICINE

Today many aspects of our lives are touched by plastics. Surgical latex gloves, syringes, IV tubing, and catheters are vital to the health of hospital patients. “Plastics for biomedical applications have many desirable properties, including low cost, ease of processing, and [the ability] to be sterilized easily,” says Bridgette Budhlall, an engineer at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She notes that plastics can even be modified with coatings that make them particularly resistant to microbes.

And of course, our homes are full of plastic items.

EVERYDAY USES For DISPOSABLE GLOVES

Some plastics used in modern, daily life would be difficult to replace, such as those used in contact lenses, traffic lights, and vehicles.  Changes are being made in the plastics industry to produce materials that can biodegrade more quickly or that are made from renewable materials like cellulose and cornstarch. One of the best ways in which you can help keep plastic out of landfills and waterways is very simple; re-use your plastic bags!

Plastic bags come home with us every time we shop for groceries and clothing or gifts and pet supplies. Any time you head out to run errands, make sure to bring along your reusable bags. One of the very best and fun crafts is to take any overabundance of single-use bags in your home and create your own reusable totes. Easy instructions are available on many DIY websites. Before the 20th century, we brought our own cloth bags to the market to carry stuff. During the Great Depression, the bags we carried were often remade into clothing. Now you can find companies using old billboard vinyl to create upscale, and expensive, re-cycled messenger bags, purses, and totes.

There is an amazing number of ways you can reduce, re-use and re-cycle the plastic bags you find in your home. Just remember that every step you take helps keep our landfills and oceans a tiny bit cleaner.

Whether you live in a small Pittsburgh apartment, a custom-built home in the upstate of South Carolina or a mansion in the Los Angeles suburbs, let’s start with a few great ideas for re-purposing plastic bags in your home.

BUY IN BULK

If you buy your spices and nuts from the bulk section in the grocery store save the little zipper-lock bags after you have put the spices into their permanent containers. The small-sized bags are great for travel containers for pills, mini sewing kits, hair ties or small candies, such as M&Ms or Skittles. As a side be sure to use food-grade bags, that hadn’t previously been used for something that would contaminate the food or store medications for an expended period of time as light shortens the life of those pills. A better alternative is to use brand new UV shielding amber bags.

ORGANIZE

Thicker bags 6 Mil Poly Bags, like those available from International Plastics, are wonderful for sorting small nuts, bolts, and thing-a-ma-jigs. You can write the sizes on the front of the bags with a permanent marker and save yourself the trial and error of finding the correctly sized nut in your tool drawer. Now a home fix-it task does not require 10 trips to the garage to find what you need.

Storing infrequently used items in plastic bags will keep them dust-free so all you need to do is unwrap them. Seldom used objects like holiday tableware and decorations are easily put in plastic bags, marked and put on a shelf. You will be so happy that you don’t have to re-wash each thing before you use it next year.

The laundry room is another place to re-use plastic bags. Again, the DIY sites can provide instructions for things like braided bags to keep clothespins or the items you find in your family’s laundry, small trash containers to hold the lint removed from the dryer or even a little braided bag to hold pens and markers that can be hung next to the family calendar.

If you have people in your family who enjoy crafting decorative objects you can find ideas for jewelry, flowers or any type of decorative thing. These plastic bag projects can be large or small and are sure to be fun for all ages.

PAINTING PROJECTS

The idea of painting a room can be daunting to many people. If you shy away from painting because it may take a few days and you don’t like cleaning and re-cleaning your rollers and brushes, stall no longer. Place your brushes, bristle side in, in a zipper-lock bag and they will stay flexible for days. The same thing can be done with your paint tray and roller; simply place everything in a super-sized plastic bag, seal it up and you won’t have to clean everything until the job is done.

SEEDLING TUBE

Drill one-inch circles in a straight line along the length of a piece of three or four-inch wide PVC piping. Insert sandwich-size plastic bags that have a few small holes poked in the bottoms, fill with soil, add seeds and you have a germinating tube that can be hung from a tree or a fence. Replace as seedlings mature and then begin again.

POOP PIPE

Attach an approximately 15-inch-long piece of 6-inch-wide PVC pipe to an inconspicuous place on your fence, preferably near the garbage can. Using a pipe cap for both ends, permanently affix the bottom end piece with an outdoor glue specifically meant for PVC piping. The top cap should remain removable. Insert a recyclable plastic bag into the pipe leaving six or so inches overhanging the upper edge (you can secure it with a rubber band). When you clean up after your pet, simply remove the cap, put the poop in the bag and cover. On garbage day take the cap off, remove the bag from the hanging pipe, tie it up and throw in a trash bag. You will have used just one bag for the week.

Some ideas are fun, and others are simply plain useful. Just remember that any plastic bags you re-use are bags that are not going into a landfill, and that is something to feel good about.

About The Author - Sam Radbil