Paper - Use and Reuse

Paper has invaded my thinking today. From starting the fire with newspaper to reading a blog on which books ended up in the discount bin (Everything Must Go) there was some kernel of meaning in it all. The transitory nature of material things? Multiple uses of newspaper?

"Not worth the paper it's printed on!" How many times have I read that comment? Now that we are facing a global environmental crisis, we might need to take that paradigm a little more to heart. Trees may well become a rarer commodity than wise or clever sayings and we will be admonished to save our valuable paper for only the noblest, best written, most important ideas, information and stories. All other words to be disseminated by the internet.

Until this takes place, we will still be innundated with paper - newspaper and its inserts - what to do with it once it has been read? Nothing is older than yesterday's news, or sales, for that matter. Once read, can we afford to just toss it out? Of course it is being recycled in increasing amounts by many communities, for the rest of us, here are some other uses for it:

• Gardening: newspaper makes great mulch. My neighbour who sports a magnificent garden uses it to kill grass, reclaiming lawn space for more engaging plant life than grass. Several layers (10?) of newsprint placed over your lawn will effectively kill the grass beneath.
• Composting: If you vermicompost, as I do, the worms need a constant supply of bedding materials, that they also digest. Shredded newspaper (black inks, preferably vegetable, are better for them, the coloured inks have more poisonous chemicals) is well tolerated by the voracious red wigglers that eat my garbage.
• Starting fires: I have discovered an effective fire starter using bunched up newspaper and paper bags. Ever since I started insisting that all my packaging be paper, rather than plastic, I have accumulated LOTS of paper bags. I use them (after removing the glued strip) to drain bacon on, to spread butter in pans for cooking and for wrapping packages to send through the mail. To start a fire, I put several bunched up pieces of newspaper into the bag and then put kindling on top of one or two bags. The bag keeps the paper close enough together to generate a focused heat and ignites the kindling quite nicely.

I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be burning wood. Although it is a sustainable resource, if logged appropriately. I do buy my wood from a "green" logger. Still there is the environmental cost with the carbon dioxide that gets thrown into the atmosphere when I burn it. My carbon footprint is not zero, but I am trying to do what I can to reduce unneeded waste. Not perfect yet, by any means, but working at improving.