Posted by fasteddy77 on Jan 28, 2010 in
Uncategorized Okay, So last year some time I made a post about the horror’s of the Capri Sun Juice bag and I was trying to figure out what I could do with the bags to recycle them… (http://www.edcharles.com/WordPress/?p=635)
Well, Over the camping season, I collected as many of them as I could in onion bags and I came out of the wild wonderful camping season of 2009 with over 400 juice bags! Hmmm, 400 bags didn’t seem like too many considering my girls can drink these down faster than Dad can drink a draft under a dare at the bar.
While we are experiencing our winter “down time” before the camping ‘kraze’ hits us, I decided to get all of these juice bags out and start to clean them up and make a reflective blanket out of them to put under each side of our camper beds to keep the heat in and the cold out. Here are a couple of pictures of the progress…
Capri Sun juice bags soaking in the sink...
The Capri Sun Juice bags being sewn together...
I’ll keep everyone updated on the final project soon!
Tags: capri sun, capri sun juice bags, recycle, terracycle, upcycling
Posted by fasteddy77 on Mar 23, 2009 in
Uncategorized Okay,
So I’m getting on this kick to try and have less than one 13 gallon trash bag a week produced by our fam of four. Since we finally have “single stream” recycling and I can pretty much recycle everything, and we’re saving all of the scraps from veggies, etc for the most anticipated “worm box”, we only have a little bit of ‘schtuff’ left.
One of the things that really bothered me this last camping trip is the damn Mylar / “space age” / crazy aluminum foil bags called Capri Sun Juice Bags. I’m going to directly pick on Capri Sun but there are a lot of other vendors out there that are using them and WHO KNOW WHO YOU ARE! (Oh yeah! I’m the Kool-Aid man! Oh Yeah!)
I knew that they were not “directly” recyclable (I must say ‘directly’ because I’m sure I’ll get an email from someone in their PR department reminding me that a company called terracycle has initiated a campaign at schools and businesses across the nation to have people ’recycle’ them and get .02 per bag for their school/cause.) The program is located here –> http://www.terracycle.net/dpb/dpb.htm Now, don’t get me wrong, this is awesome, because at least these bags are not heading directly to the landfill. (They have at least one more stop..) Oh wait, I’m sorry, the PR people have stepped in again and called this ‘upcycling’.
Wiki says that ‘upcycling‘ — “is a component of sustainability in which waste materials are used to provide new products. It is generally a reinvestment in the environment. “Upcycling is the practice of taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value.” This process allows for the reduction of waste and virgin material use.”
So, in other words, the juice bags will have at least a couple of additional years before they are thrown into the landfill when the purses and other items they are creating out of these resources are not ‘couture’ anymore and tossed.
I know, I know, Mr. Negative, but seriously, how about just scrap the whole idea of wrapping a liquid in a product that never decomposes and try something else?
Anyhow, let me get off of my soap box and actually talk about what my project is for ‘upcycling’ juice bags.
I have noticed on a couple of blogs that people that camp in the extreme temperatures use a reflective material that you can get a home improvement stores to block heat loss / heat absorption. With this said, I’m going to start collecting these juice bags and make my own ‘reflective blanket’ to put under each of our pull-outs on our trailer to keep the heat in when needed… This will definitely be a work in progress for a while, cause it’ll take a lot of juice bags to cover just one king size pullout.
So, if you want to contribute, let me know!!
Tags: capri sun, recycling, terracycle, upcycling, vermicomposting, worms
