Not only is recycling good for the environment and your wallet, but it can spread joy as well, as one homeowner has found.
The homeowner took to the r/ZeroWaste subreddit to share a recent delivery they received that featured a common household item being recycled.
The homeowner revealed they had received mail from a local environmental group. However, the mail wasn't in plain white envelopes.
Instead, volunteers with the organization used old calendars to make envelopes from scratch.
"Nice no waste envelopes," the Reddit poster said, adding, "I thought it was very awesome."
In a picture uploaded with the post, an envelope can be seen with a sticker placed along the top. The sticker reads, "JUST FOR YOU. This envelope is made from our retired calendars, cut and glued by dedicated Wilderness Committee volunteers."
Calendars can be a tricky thing to save as most are customized to the months and weeks of one year. Some clever crafters have discovered that calendars can be reused in the future, as many years have days that line up exactly with others. However, this often requires homeowners to hold on to calendars for years at a time.
Other crafty individuals have recommended upcycling calendars by creating wall art, bookmarks, puzzles, drawer liners, textbook covers, greeting cards, and more.
By repurposing calendars into reusable envelopes — or other similar crafts — businesses and homeowners can save money on regular boxes of envelopes, which can be priced as high as $20 at big box retailers like Walmart. For a business especially, it can be a great PR move as well, as this Reddit post demonstrates.
Reusing, upcycling, or recycling keeps retired calendars out of toxic air polluting landfills that are already overflowing with paper and other similar waste. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that more than 17 million tons of paper is sitting in landfills as of 2018. Thankfully, more items like calendars, printing paper, and other office supplies are getting recycled. In 2018, nearly 46 million tons of paper products were recycled.
By reusing retired calendars for ingenious crafts like envelopes, we can do our part to keep reducing the number of items that end up going to waste.
Many other Reddit users have raved over the recycling initiative, with one person calling it a "great idea."
"I love this idea!!" another wrote.
"Great reuse!" a third said. "Not as good as printing the number of calendars you need, but the next best thing."
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