Repurposed4you.com's February Newletter

Hello From www.Repurposed4you.com!

Alot has happened around here since the holidays!

We have put some our favorite red and pink and lovable items as 10% off now through Valentine's Day!

We have added several new artists that we are excited about!
We are pleased to welcome...

Charlotte from Hand Candy Mittens and her line of adorable cozy mittens made from recycled sweaters http://repurposed4you.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3_20

Laura from Bottled Up Designs and her line of beautiful earrings made from reclaimed glasshttp://repurposed4you.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3_21

Bill from Ozark Lake Decor and his line of hand made hummingbird feeders and garden decor made from reclaimed copper and recycled glass http://repurposed4you.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=22_23

Gretchen from Junk Mail Gems and her line of one of a kind beads, wallets, bookmarks, coin purses, handmade paper and more all made from Recycled Junk Mail http://repurposed4you.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3_25

Suzanne from Ja Ja Ja Purses and her line of adorable purses made from recycled fabric http://repurposed4you.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3_25

Jennifer from Made from the Heart and her line of distinctive bracelets, earrings, necklaces and more made from recycled aluminum soda cans. http://repurposed4you.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3_27

Check out all of the artists and their unique recycled goods. We are so proud to have them as part of our team!

More New artists coming soon so keep an eye out!

Know an artist that works in recycled goods?Do you know an artist that works in recycled, reclaimed or repurposed goods that might be interested in selling their art online. Send them over. We have an easy to use contact form for potential artists on our website and we are always looking for new "green" goods.

Valentine's Day
That Pink and Red Heart Shaped, Chocolate covered, Red Rose Filled day is coming soon. Some people hate it and some people love it. Whatever side you are on, tell someone, whoever they might be, that you love them. It's easy and it makes you both feel good!

Things you might not know were recycleable
(Pasted from Co-Op America Website, along with our own 2 cents)

1. Appliances: Goodwill accepts working appliances, www.goodwill.org, or you can contact the Steel Recycling Institute to recycle them. 800/YES-1-CAN, www.recycle-steel.org.
2. Batteries: Rechargeables and single-use: Battery Solutions, 734/467-9110, www.batteryrecycling.com. Check with your local recycler to see if they collect batteries too.
3. Cardboard boxes: Contact local nonprofits and women’s shelters to see if they can use them. Or, offer up used cardboard boxes at your local Freecycle.org listserv or on Craigslist.org for others who may need them for moving or storage. If your workplace collects at least 100 boxes or more each month, UsedCardboardBoxes.com accepts them for resale. Check with your local recycler, some collect cardboard along with other recycle pickup.
4. CDs/DVDs/Game Disks: Send scratched music or computer CDs, DVDs, and PlayStation or Nintendo video game disks to AuralTech for refinishing, and they’ll work like new: 888/454-3223, www.auraltech.com.
5. Clothes: Wearable clothes can go to your local Goodwill outlet or shelter. Donate wearable women’s business clothing to Dress for Success, which gives them to low-income women as they search for jobs, 212/532-1922, www.dressforsuccess.org. Offer unwearable clothes and towels to local animal boarding and shelter facilities, which often use them as pet bedding. Consider holding a clothes swap at your office, school, faith congregation or community center. Swap clothes with friends and colleagues, and save money on a new fall wardrobe and back-to-school clothes. Check out or contact www.BeccasCloset.org to donate an old prom dress to a student who might not otherwise go to her event, with this worthwile and meaningful cause, and if you really want somethingto tug on your heart strings, read the story about how beccascloset.org got started
6. Compact fluorescent bulbs: Take them to your local IKEA store for recycling: www.ikea.com. 7. Compostable bio-plastics: You probably won’t be able to compost these in your home compost bin or pile. Find a municipal composter to take them to at www.findacomposter.com.
8. Computers and electronics: Find the most responsible recyclers, local and national, at www.ban.org/pledge/Locations.html.
9. Exercise videos: Swap them with others at www.videofitness.com.
10. Eyeglasses: Your local Lion’s Club or eye care chain may collect these. Lenses are reground and given to people in need.
11. Foam packing: Your local pack-and-ship store will likely accept foam peanuts for reuse. Or, call the Plastic Loose Fill Producers Council to find a drop-off site: 800/828-2214. For places to drop off foam blocks for recycling, contact the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers, 410/451-8340, www.epspackaging.org/info.html
12. Ink/toner cartridges: Recycleplace.com pays $1/each. www.Recycle4dollars.com (link on our website) will give you various amounts depending on the type of ink cartidges, or they will donate that money to a charity of your choice.
13. Miscellaneous: Get your unwanted items into the hands of people who can use them. Offer them up on your local Freecycle.org or Craigslist.org listserv, or try giving them away at Throwplace.com or giving or selling them at iReuse.com. iReuse.com will also help you find a recycler, if possible, when your items have reached the end of their useful lifecycle.
14. Oil: Find Used Motor Oil Hotlines for each state: 202/682-8000, www.recycleoil.org.
15. Phones: Donate cell phones: Collective Good will refurbish your phone and sell it to someone in a developing country: 770/856-9021, www.collectivegood.com. Call to Protect reprograms cell phones to dial 911 and gives them to domestic violence victims: www.donateaphone.com. Recycle single-line phones: Reclamere, 814/386-2927, www.reclamere.com. www.recycle4charity.com (link on our website) will also refurbish them and give them to charitable agencies.
16. Sports equipment: Resell or trade it at your local Play It Again Sports outlet, 800/476-9249, www.playitagainsports.com.
17. “Technotrash”: Project KOPEG offers an e-waste recycling program that can help you raise funds for your organization. Use Project KOPEG to recycle iPods, MP3 players, cell phones and chargers, digital cameras, PDAs, palm pilots, and more. Also, easily recycle all of your CDs, jewel cases, DVDs, audio and video tapes, pagers, rechargeable and single-use batteries, PDAs, and ink/toner cartridges with GreenDisk’s Technotrash program. For $30, GreenDisk will send you a cardboard box in which you can ship them up to 70 pounds of any of the above. Your fee covers the box as well as shipping and recycling fees. 800/305-GREENDISK, www.greendisk.com.
18. Tennis shoes: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program turns old shoes into playground and athletic flooring. www.nikereuseashoe.com. One World Running will send still-wearable shoes to athletes in need in Africa, Latin America, and Haiti. www.oneworldrunning.com.
19. Toothbrushes and razors: Buy a recycled plastic toothbrush or razor from Recycline, and the company will take it back to be recycled again into plastic lumber. Recycline products are made from used Stonyfield Farms’ yogurt cups. 888/354-7296, www.recycline.com.
20. Tyvek envelopes: Quantities less than 25: Send to Shirley Cimburke, Tyvek Recycling Specialist, 5401 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Spot 197, Room 231, Richmond, VA 23234. Quantities larger than 25, call 866/33-TYVEK.
21. Plastic grocery bags: Many local grocers have large donation boxes at the front of their stores to collect plasic grocery bags. Locally, I have Publix and Albertsons that offer donation points.
22. Crocs: Check out www.solesunited.com to see where you can donate or ship your old Crocs. Recycled Crocs will be sorted cleaned, ground and made into new Soles United footwear. See the site for more information on what happens then and where they get shipping to.
23. Stuff you just can’t recycle: When practical, send such items back to the manufacturer and tell them they need to manufacture products that close the waste loop responsibly.

Do you have any fun recycling ideas? Can you add to this list, email us and let us know so that we can spread the word! As always, we'd love to hear from you!

If you have any questions, comments or anything you'd like to get off your chest please drop us an email contact@repurposed4you.com

Happy Valentine's Dayfrom the www.Repurposed4you.com Team

How the Depression Taught Grandma to be Green

This past fall, an anniversary has come and gone that I have heard little fanfare about. Black Thursday. Not the famed best shopping day of the year, where retailers open at 4 am and sale catalogs weigh 5 pounds a piece. But the infamous anniversary of that fateful day that took us into the Great Depression.
I am not a political analyst touting the cautions and comparisons to our times and those that lead up to that dark day. I really pay no mind to the issues that flood the internet linking the Depression to present day concerns. However, there is one thing that caught my attention as I sat down to write my “Green Christmas Tips “article for the www.repurposed4you.com newsletter. I couldn’t get this thought out of my head. Did Grandma start going green in the 1930’s and no one noticed?
The Great Depression was a terrible time in our history, full of homelessness, joblessness and poverty. To my amazing discovery, it was also a time of being frugal, being thrifty and going green. The environment wasn’t the issue. Al Gore wasn’t standing on his 100% post-consumer recycled soap box warning of doom and gloom. It wasn’t an option to reuse items. There weren’t green stores, green art and green articles teaching us how to be more green. There wasn’t this type of save the earth mentality that made people change their ways. But instead the Great Depression was a time of conservation based out of necessity.
"Repair, reuse, make do, and don't throw anything away" was a motto during the Great Depression. Look how far we have come. Look how gone to the other extreme. Is it only the” tree huggers” and the “environmentalists” that see the usefulness in that phrase today. That slogan could easily be on any Eco Friendly Website and no one would know that it was regularly tossed around in homes 70 plus years ago.
Their green behavior is clear; their environmentally sound practices are shown through their resourcefulness. These lessons that they taught their kids have since gotten lost in an age of waste. Grandma became the nutty one for reusing cloth ribbon on her packages and neatly folding her gift wrap and saving it for the following holiday. And we became so superior for showing her how we can mindlessly discard anything that isn’t shiny and new any longer. Remember, Grandma was the one who wore dresses and sometimes even undergarments made out of feed bags and flour sacks because her mom wouldn’t toss out the colorful cotton. Our grandparents were taught that once socks could not be patched any longer they could be tied to the end of a long handle to become a mop. Glass jelly jars became everyday drinking glasses, geese would have their bellies plucked for the family to have a softer bed and oh, those beautiful handmade quilts and rugs made from worn out clothing. Everything outdoors became the kid’s entertainment. The garden was their grocery store. There was no thought to how much pesticide was on the produce or how much fuel it took to ship it across the country to your local neighborhood market. The electricity was limited to illumining the house at night, if that, and not for mindless hours of television, video games and lighting rooms we aren’t even in. They composted. They recycled. They did the things everyday that we pat ourselves on the back for; Repurposing, Reusing and Recycling. They were the first environmentalists, without even knowing it.
Every “Going Green” Holiday article you will read this season will tell you to start folding your paper to save it for next year like it is a new concept. Remember, Grandma still does this now. This is not a new concept. Grandma may have had this one right. And you never know she might just be right about her bee hive making a come back too.

Wonky

"You Spin me right round baby right round like a record baby right round, round round" was the song that all the records gathered around the jukebox in the Turnsville Soda Shop to listen to.But it was not always that happy, oh no a long long time ago it was far worse.

One day a little record, let's call him Wonky, learned how to turn on a turn table and play music at the same time. What a multi-tasker! Anywhoo,Wonky wanted to do something special for his girlfriend because it was their fourth anniversary together. So he went to Google and typed in green gifts. After all he remembers her saying she loved the color green. Well he found Repurposed4you.com (repurposed treasures for you and your home) for you that had qwerty keys on it and he bought it for the low low price of eight ninety-five. He wanted to do more for her since she was quote "extra special" so he found a pop-up about the beautiful, extravagant, (and any other positive adjetives you could think of) Island of the Spinners. So he bought the package including air fare.

Once they arrived, they went to check into the hotel and then they took a romantic stroll around the beach, but to Wonky and Wonkette's (Wonky's girlfriend) surprise it was 105 degrees outside. And all the records that were sunbathing . . . . . melted.

Wonky and Wonkette rolled quickly back to the hotel and floored it right to their room. Wonky unhesitantly picked up the phone and called Audrey from repurposed4you.com. She said that she would be right over. She said that there was no hope for the melted records except (here is where the story turns around) she could make them into bowls.

So we named the bowls after the brave record that acted to save the environment. And they lived happily ever after. And by the way Wonkette loved her qwerty keys.



This is a narrative story because records can not type or dial numbers on a phone.

Repurposed4you.com Saves And Salvages One Keyboard At A Time

Repurposed4you.com is saving old junked up keyboards and turning them into magnificent magnets. Why do they do this you ask? Did your grandparents ever tell you the story of KeyLand? Well it's a magical story and you blog readers are going to hear it if you read on(which you should).


In KeyLand all the little keys live a happy life. Their day starts out by going to typing lessons. They go to chorus and learn about key notes. Then they go to Study Hall and dream about going out with the mouse next door. Then comes reading. The "A" key gets an A+. They grow up they go and hang out with the wrong doers like "F" and "D". And that's when everything goes to crap in KeyLand.


All they do is grow up to be plugged into a computer and get pressed on everyday. The Keyberts are discarded when the new styles arrive. There is no more use for them. The relationship of the keyboard and laptop gets oblitereated and for the laptop, the plug is pulled. The poor keys get wound up in the trecherous Waste Stream.


Repurposed4you.com feels bad for those keys and the keys get repurposed. The Keyberts get Extreme Makeover Keybert Edition. They get to become magnets and instead going out with the mouse, they are sticking to the refridgerator. So that is the story of the Keyberts and KeyLand. And Remember when you think of keyboards think of repurposed4you.com.