Scrap Reuse Score

I went to lunch today at My Canh restaurant because I was thirsty for one of those avocado smoothies.

When I left, I found some scrap from matboards. Some were rejects, most were the inside bits that are useless to the framers. The frame shop next door had left this stuff outside their recycle bin, which says to me they hoped someone would come along and take it away. Take it away I did. I packed my messenger bag full of pieces as small as 2X2 inches, quite a few dozen ranging from 4X5 to 6X9, and even a few larger.

This stuff will be AH-maaazing for crafty projects with the kids. We could make tiny board books with duct tape. We could could glue piece on piece for 3D sculpture. We could paint. We could float laser prints on top of the pieces. We could make our own books with covers. Also there were giant frame scraps: they were at least 5X6 feet, from which a grid of matboards had been cut out. This gave me an idea for a simple frame grid for the 9 or 12 laser prints that would fit of close-up photos to make an oversized art piece, no glass. Like Hollywood Squares. I'll have to ask K if she gets any of those for scrap. They were too big for me to take on the bus.

I came back to work just a couple minutes late. I had to hustle because when I dug the bits out of their plastic garbage bag, I kept seeing more and more, and I wanted to get all I could. I was telling everyone about my find. One co-worker said she'd rather eat dirt than do crafts. hehe. She said it hadn't occurred to her that reusing is also recycling. Oh my! I said it's better than recycling! With recycling, companies still expend resources trucking the stuff around, breaking it down, and creating something else. Recycling is better than using virgin material, but reusing skips all those processing expenses and goes straight back to the consumer.

I didn't say anything about reducing. There's good reason for the particular order of the saying, "Reduce, reuse, recycle."