Pre cycle!

What a wonderful thought, what a wonderful discovery!
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, Compost ......................................
now I learn of a new word precycle, a new term, seems to me like it should have come first. How could we skip the most important part?
Have you ever purchased something just for it's packaging?
example; the color of it? the shape of it? It's ability to be reused? I buy wine bottles for their unique color and or shapes, I also purchase items that I can reuse over & over again.

1) those nylon like netted bags that they package; lemons, apples, onions, avocados, and so much more of in. *They sell that material preformed as scrungies for the bath, scouring pads for tough kitchen clean up, and you can also use them to bundle your own gift baskets! (I personally hate bread ties made of wire. Plastic clips I hang onto for reuse with the netted nylon like bags!

Forgive me because I get so excited over reinventing ways to save money and mother earth. How can you go wrong accomplishing both task with an item that usually goes to a landfill or maybe worse burned with coal for energy.

2) Glass jars and bottles, if your not collecting them why not store them for; *milk, juice, tea, ? *the larger ones are great to give dry ingredients for cookies, breads, ..... with recipe of the wet ingredients to finish it up. When layered just right they are pretty. Labels are fairly easy to remove and I've found them to be impressive.

3) Styrofoam (meat & veggie) containers. I place mine in the dishwasher to clean & sterilize them. *They make great insulators for my husband's lunch pail when I need to seperate hot from cold. Easy to cut down to fit any lunch pail, bag, or box, and can be used many times before disposal! *Crafters who use glitter, confetti, and other multiple small items find them very handy to collect the excess which would normally be waste. Not to mention great for easter egg coloring time, great to mix paints on, great to use as a disposable plate.

4.) shopping bags from grocerie stores, reuse then recycle when possible. Dead weight conversation here, I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. There was a time when I collected them much like currancy from shopping, if only they had as much value as an alluminum can! Funny thing, they do, just not to us the consumer. Now days I use my own as much as possible. Here I go getting wordy again. However you catch yourself off guard shopping without your green bags. *I keep a stash for packing, (blow air in them, or just wrap with them), use for texturized paint techniques (just crinkle tie off or rubber band and dip lightly into paint), the rest I take to my local grocery store for recycling along with bread bags and other plastic bags curb side won't pick up. If you take the time to start to collect, you might be amazed at how fast they stack up, I was.