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Before Recycling
Became Environmentally Correct
by
Felice Prager
I often say my grandmother was the original recycler.
Even before the days of recycling bins, soda cans, and fast
food, my grandmother could find uses for things that others
simply threw away.
She was a recycler before it
became fashionable. When, in the Fifties, other were throwing
things out and buying new and better, Grandma was finding new
uses for old things.
Perhaps it was living through
the depression or her days in Europe when she had nothing but a
desire for a better life, but Grandma could take someone’s
garbage and turn it into a very useful item – at least it was to
her.
We would make fun of her and
often her antics would embarrass us, but Grandma was smarter
than all of us are combined. Nowadays, with warehouse like
stores like Sam’s Club and Costco/Price Club, her name often
comes up. “Grandma would have loved this place.”
English not being her native tongue, it seemed so awkward
and entertaining when this little woman would sift something we
had just thrown out from the trashcan and say, “Waste not, want
not!” It was almost as if she knew something the rest of us
didn’t even think about – yet. Grandma would wash the item well,
and put it with the rest of her recyclable treasures.
“It will have a use someday.
You’ll see and laugh at yourself for laughing at your poor old
Grandma,” she’d say.
She had cabinets filled with washed out bottles and
containers from the delicatessen. My father would tell her,
“Throw it away! I’ll buy you containers from the store,” and she
would respond with, “I might need it someday.
Keep your money in your
pocket for a rainy day.” I remember after she died, when we were
cleaning out her cabinets and closets, my father saying, “Mom
would kill me for this,” as he discarded another plastic vat or
glass jar.
But Grandma was good. If a second life could exist for an
item, she would find it. I remember the first time she saw a
plastic straw. “Don’t throw that out,” she said. I can use it to
hold up my plants as they grow.” When Baggies came on the
market, she was overjoyed with the concept of those twisty-ties.
“I can wrap them around
straws to keep my plants from falling.” All of this was in her
broken English. I remember going to her apartment one time and
her hair was twisted around straws and held in place with twisty
ties. “Sure,” she said, “You spend your father’s money on fancy
rollers. I don’t need them to make my hair pretty.” And she was
beautiful with her tight ringlets.
Grandma did not need to buy new “gizmos and gadgets” as
she called them. On her windowsill, she had an empty tissue box
filled with birdseed. The birds did not care where the seeds
were kept just as long as Grandma filled her homemade feeder.
When we took her places, if
we had drinks in disposable cups, Grandma would collect all the
cups and take them home, rinse them out, and dry them. “It’s a
sin to waste,” she would say. I do not know if she ever drank
from them, but I know she used them as plant starters – a little
soil and a seed.
She also used them to sort
her threads, pins, needles, snaps, buttons, and beads for the
handiwork she did. “I can’t see small things,” she said, “This
makes it easier on my old eyes.”
The first time she saw me
playing with Silly Putty, her reaction was, “When your Silly
Pooty gets old, save the egg. I want it for hooks and eyes.”
Old toothbrushes were not discarded. They were perfect
for cleaning silverware, jewelry, and those little spots Grandma
kept spotless – the cracks and crevices fingers could not clean
very well.
I once saw Grandma standing
on her kitchen stool. With a piece of my grandfather’s old
undershirt tied around a toothbrush, Grandma was cleaning her
chandelier.
Times are different now. There are so many more
disposable items. However, I think a little of my grandmother
rubbed off on me. Often, I will find myself standing at the
trashcan holding an item I am about to throw out, thinking,
“Hmmmm…..I’ll be, I can use
this for SOMETHING!”
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