The Second of the Three R's: Reuse
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Water bottles - here's a shocking number for you: over 350 million beverage containers are landfilled, incinerated, or littered every day nationwide. Please make an effort to reduce your purchases of single use beverage containers (aka plastic water bottles). Instead, get yourself a couple of good quality water bottles and fill them with our fine Methow Valley water. If you're hauling water to your home, consider a reusable 3 or 5 gallon jug.
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Shopping bags - rather than neatly collecting paper shopping bags after using them once and bringing them to Methow Recycles, consider either reusing them when you return to the store, use them them to line your trash cans at home, or better yet, purchase a reusable shopping bag or two from valley grocers, and get in the habit of returning it to your car so that it's there when you need it.
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Building materials - be as efficient as you can be with your materials, and when you can, look for them at Methow Resource Recovery. If you have materials you don't need, see if the fine folks there are interested in finding them a home!
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Try the local electronic bulliten boards for finding reuse options:
- Methownet.com
- MyMethow.com
- Methow.com
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Clothes swaps - a few times a year in my neighborhood a bunch of us get together at the community club with the clothes we no longer want and put them out for anyone there to have. It's fun to see your friend in that shirt that you liked, but it never fit you right!
This list is just a start. If you'd like to add to it, please send us your thoughts!