Photographs by LAURA MOSS / Styled by DANNY SEO We can do better! Sure, it’s easy to recycle an empty soda can or yesterday’s Times, but what about broken remote controls, stray cable cords, and tennis balls that have lost their oomph? Not only can you recycle them, you won’t break a sweat with our Naturally simple ways to recycle almost anything.
1. TENNIS BALLS
There are only so many tennis balls your dog can fetch, so give old balls a new reason to bounce.
If you’ve got at least 200 old tennis balls, the company reBounces wants them. Their patented Green Tennis Machine actually restores dead tennis balls, giving them back life—and their original bounce. For your generous collection of dead balls, they’ll give you a free pre-paid FedEx slip. Hop over to rebounces.com.
2. BRITA WATER FILTERS
When it’s time to replace your old Brita water filters, don’t toss them into the trash. Brita and Preserve Products have made it easy to recycle them.
Just drop off your old filters in a Gimme 5 recycling bin (in most Whole Foods stores) and they’ll recycle the plastic parts into new products like razors, watering cans, and park benches. The old filter parts will be converted into earth-friendly energy. Learn more at brita.com.
3. SHARPIE PENS
The majority of a Sharpie permanent ink pen is recyclable, and the innovative recycling company TerraCycle wants your old, dried-out pens so they can rework them into new plastic products.
Get your local school or office revved up to start a renew-it brigade at terracycle.com. It’s as easy as gathering up all your old Sharpies, highlighters, pens, markers, and mechanical pencils.
4. WINE CORKS
The bottle of vino may be empty, but don’t toss the real cork into the trash. ReCORK collects real wine corks (47 million to date!) and then grinds them up for use in new consumer products like flooring and soles for shoes.
Your favorite wine shop may already be participating, or you can visit recork.org to find a recycling bin near where you live.
Want to know what else you can recycle? Find out more and pick up the first issue of Naturally, Danny Seo. Out now.
