Day 22 · Waste

Keep the jar

Wash out the next empty jar instead of recycling it, and give it a job.

Glass recycles well, but a jar reused is better than a jar remelted. Pasta-sauce jars hold rice, lentils, nails, buttons, pens, leftovers. Coffee tins hold everything else. A wide-mouth jar is a drinking glass, a vase, a lunch pot. Soak the label off in warm water, keep the lids, and stand three or four in a cupboard where you will actually reach for them. Once you have a few, you stop buying containers. The rest can still go in the recycling.