Yup, it was all scrounged from work(I work at a thrift store run by a recycling center) The tempered/crash glass too! lol! The blue flower is actually a candle holder with a glass glob in it, and the duck was a broken stained glass item ready to be tossed...but I SAVED it!!!lol! Talk about junk!!!

Thanks 'yall. I was happy to have an original project for once! Kathi- I got the suns at Dollar Tree. They were hiding out near the candles. They were on the top shelf and kind of behind everything else. I got one of each design they had.

My county has been recycling for many years. Some areas have county trash service, but all private companies are required to have regular recycling pickups. Not optional, *required* (you can imagine the howls that greeted that regulation). Yard waste is picked up weekly (except for winter), shredded, and turned into free shredded-leaves or coarse chips. Otherwise, we are requested to put all paper -including magazines- newspapers and cardboard into paper bags (or bundled/tied with non-plastic twine) while cans, glassware, and a limited assortment of plastics (types 1 and 2) are picked up weekly. That limited assortment is a bit sad, but apparently there is no manufacturer within a reasonable distance to re-use the other types of plastic. There are centralized stations which take [and recycle] used oil, paints, dead batteries, and so on and on. There are non-government centers for recycling styrofoam and packing materials. I've attached the county's info link because it has some interesting pictures; it confirms that materials are sorted by hand; glass is sorted according to color; and a population of less than a million [it's an old link] produces more than a half-million tons of recycleable materials per year. Meanwhile, DH & I produce about a grocery sackful of recycleables a month. Here is a link that might be useful: Recycling

The laundry detergent is not single serve nor is the soap refills I'm talking about. I'd wonder about the comparison of bar soap with their wrappers to a refill pouch. The reality is most people are too lazy to recycle. Method's point in what I quoted is that the pouch has lower environmental impact and I have to agree with them on it. Less fuel to transport, less space taken up in a landfill even figuring the percentage that could be recycled on a PET bottle. I do have a concern about 11 billion packets a year from Heinz alone. I'm guessing that's worldwide. But the pragmatic part of me asks are we being penny wise and pound foolish being concerned about ketchup packets when nearly twice that many disposable diapers are put in the landfills each year in the US alone? 1 ketchup packet or 2 diapers... I think I'll take the ketchup packs thank you! It's like the ones who criticize me (and others) for having a non-HE washer, but I do fewer loads to start with than my critics. I also wash my vehicles in the rain and snow where they use hoses and car washes. I don't water my lawn or flower garden. I take quick showers instead of 100 gallon whirlpool baths and I don't have or use a swimming pool or hot tub and the list goes on. Gotta put some priorities in place sometime. Not to say the packet isn't a concern and sometimes you tackle small problems first if they're easy. But we've really missed the boat ecologically on some other things. Another peeve of mine: The war on water. Why is water always the villain while pop, "sport drinks", 5 hr. Energy, and for that matter coffee cups and soft drink cups get by? Again, if you look at what's the healthier one, seems we should be endorsing water over sugar laden drinks and the HFCS folks can relax since water doesn't have it in there (yet). Again, I question priorities. I also wonder why people have to have so much stench in things. Why do laundry detergents have to smell to start with, requiring 30 different SKUs of one brand for different stench. Why not have dye/stench free and sell the stench and dye separately so you can add your own? And you can have all kinds of different stench to choose from. So much simpler, less hassles and lower costs. But that's three things the buying public don't want apparently. And they're too lazy to mix the two together. People have to have everything done for them. We really need to put on some boots. And boot some people in the aspirations. This post was edited by cynic on Wed, May 22, 13 at 15:58