One only needs to wander any supermarket to confirm America’s love affair with carbonated beverages. Their containers, both aluminum and plastic, clog landfills and litter roads, forests, beaches, everywhere. The creation of said containers is a horrific process as well, in the drilling of our “economic blood” or petroleum for creating the plastic bottles, or in the mining of minerals to create the aluminum cans. Ideally we would all recognize the health benefit of not consuming gallons of diabetic coma inducing, high-fructose corn syrup laden fraudulent thirst quencher. In the absence of that healthy decision, we can still minimize the impact of that consumption by finding other uses for the containers before recycling them. The 2-liter plastic bottles are quite useful. Cut the top off and put it over tomato, pepper, and other plants in the garden to create an on the spot “green house”. They can be cut in half and a hole cut in the top of one side to fit over a spigot on an Igloo (or other) beverage dispenser to catch the drips and protect the floor or not encourage ants at the picnic table. There are spikes that fit into the spouts for continuous watering of plants- fill the bottle, put spike in spout, put upside down near plant roots. (This can be done with house plants and smaller bottles). They also freeze well if you leave room for the ice to expand, thus negating the need to BUY ice for your ice chests. The small water/soda bottles frozen in such a manner make fabulous “icers” on which to roll sore feet. I have also used them to store hummingbird food.

Aluminum cans are harder to find uses for. When I was a kid we would save the tabs and make had bands with them, but the new tabs don’t work in quite the same way. I have only found one use for the aluminum cans. I cut them up make garden labels. The aluminum is soft enough that a nail works as a writing implement and they don’t rust, so when nailed to a stake or on your garden bed, they last, and the names don’t fade. You can also punch a hole in one end and use a with a wire twist tie to label trees and shrubs.

What do YOU do with your soda/water containers?

Clear Stuff

Costco is great cuz it has such large quantities of "stuff". Some of the containers are pretty useful too. The apples, mangoes and sometimes the pears, come in these interesting clamshells, with spaces shaped a lot like the fruit they contain. They are also shaped a lot like Christmas tree balls. They work pretty well to keep the glass ornaments from bumping and breaking in the bins, and avoid the necessity of wrapping each one. The big rectangular boxes that lettuce or spinach comes in are great storage containers too. I use them in my pantry to keep mixer parts, salad shooter parts, food processor blades, cookie cutters, bags of stuff like brown sugar or coconut, etc. They also work well as craft supply containers, because they are clear and stackable. Who needs to spend big bucks on fancy containers, when you can reuse something you already buy anyway? They do not weather the dishwasher well. Fortunately, they usually don't come with any hard to clean substance in them, so handwashing isn't too bad. I did try to use one for compost, but they are a little too frail for the weight that can become, so I use the container from the dishwasher soap "Action Packs" for compost in the kitchen. Those are just the right size for daily use, they close tightly, and do well in the dishwasher too.

What do YOU do with all that clear plastic?