Easy Peasy Tip: Recycle your Toilet Paper Roll
By tinychoices | July 31, 2010
This Easy Peasy Tip is a little more directed than many of them, but it’s one of those “oh, RIGHT” things that can take a while for people to pick up on. Next time you change your toilet paper in the bathroom? Remember to carry that cardboard toilet paper tube out with you and stick it in your regular paper/cardboard recycling. It’s easy to forget to do something so simple, because, well, the bathroom is not a place where you are thinking about recycling (unless you’re dreaming of your perfect toilet, or thinking about the material your toilet seat is made out of, or maybe you’re sitting on a composting toilet?). So make a point to remember to recycle your cardboard toilet paper tube, and avoid making a little more waste.
[[Photo from flickr user wintersoul1 via creative commons license.]]
Topics: Easy Peasy Tips | 10 Comments »
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yes! great tip! we started a little bucket next to the toilet for this very purpose … i let the toilet paper rolls and any shampoo/conditioner/soap bottles pile up and then dump the whole thing into the large recycling bin when it is full.
easy peasy!
Such a good point! It’s so easy to just drop that roll into the bathroom trash instead of taking down to the recycle bin. Thanks for the reminder.
-Deb for Ecover
Loved this easy idea so much we posted it on our Facebook page!
-Deb for Ecover
Long before I recycle the tube I find other uses for it. I roll my light scarves in them and they stack nicely and the scarves never become tangled, I have quite a few. I also used them and the paper towel ones for rolling placemats, mosquito netting, and any other like items, also filling them with lint and paper shreds to use as starter for the woodstove and I use them for starting my seedlings in the spring, I plant the directly in the ground, there are no bottoms and they break down. I live alone so a roll will last me a month ( ask me if I am even home) so I haven’t had to toss one in ages.
Or you can save the toilet and paper towel cardboard tubes and use them as brown (carbon) material in your compost bin or compost tumbler.
And hey, compost the paper towels too instead of throwing them in the trash if you feel you have to use them.
I made wipes out of flannel baby receiving blankets (always way tooooo many given to new mamas) and have not used toilet paper in 17 months. BTW, I love the wipes.
I have a recycle bin in my bathroom right next to the garbage. It tends to fill up first.
They make great toys for my pet chinchillas. I stuff them with hay and they have fun chewing the cardboard to get to the hay. I’d use paper towel rolls but they have that yucky sticky coating.
When I was younger I would let my cats bat them around, or fill them with beans and more cardboard to make them into rain sticks for my younger siblings. When the cats and the kids were done with them I’d recycle them.
But now that I’m out on my own I cut them length wise, flatten them out under some heavy books and reuse them for things like writing grocery lists on before they reach the recycle bin.