If you think upcycling is only for people with creative mind and artistic hands, we can help change your perspective here. There are several ways you can upcycle things in your everyday life to help reach your zerowaste goals without being the one with a dominant right brain. Bonus : you also save money in the process by reusing, repurposing existing things and not buying new ones. Here are some simple, quick, and easy ways you can upcycle products you use in your daily life for a sustainable living and save Mother Earth:
- Using glass jars from store-bought jams, pasta sauce, and more as storage containers is one of the easiest methods to be environmentally friendly while being on a budget. Products in glass might be sometimes more expensive to start with than those in plastic containers but can save your pocket long-term by not spending additional money on storage containers. Also, Glass is fragile and heavy in weight which means that it has a high carbon footprint during shipping. It’s just not worthwhile to just use it once and throw in the recycle bin. Try to reuse glass containers in as many forms as you can!
- Many people receive greeting cards and recycle them. But aren't they sometimes too cute to throw? Why not use old greeting cards to make new cards! Have an arts and crafts night with your children and teach them that they don’t always have to buy new cards. Take a simple piece of paper, cut, and paste a design from an old greeting card to make an original, handmade, and personalized gift! An old ribbon can make the card even more festive, too! Needless to say, these cards look super cute with their customized, personalized touch!
- Have you ever received nice boxes with shopping and not known what to do with them? Turn them into organizers! You can even add some designs and patterns from magazines to bring them to life. Shoe boxes make great organizers as they are sturdy and compact! Kids can even show their creativity by adding some art on top of the original branding and making their own personal organizers for stationery!
- Here’s something which you may not have heard of : use egg trays as a grow pot for small seeds especially the cardboard ones. You don’t need to purchase grow pots for seeds as they are just starting to grow – they don’t need as much space which is why egg cartons are great for starting seeds. You can even plant them directly in the soil later, the cardboard will eventually decompose.
- Keep the gift bags and tissue papers that you receive in gifts. You can easily reuse them when gifting to your friends and family (especially now that Christmas is approaching!).
- Christmas will be here sooner than you think. Wrapping gifts in colorful magazines or newspapers instead of purchasing new wrapping paper can add a personalized touch to the gift but can also make the gift appear to be unique. For example, you can get creative by wrapping a car-loving kid with a picture of a car! Wrapping paper mostly goes in the waste otherwise.
We hope you got inspired and will try some of these tips at home. We would love to know any other examples of upcycling you have done at home!
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