You can find a new use for most things!

I saw a great article in the paper yesterday, titled "12 ways to reuse household items". Though the suggestions were fairly basic and obvious, it got me thinking about all the things I've reused for the sake of keeping them out of landfills for just a little longer. Here's what I've come up with off the top of my head. Hopefully it will give you some ideas on how to reuse items you're thinking of tossing.

• Add old cutlery to your camping gear.

• An old hair brush makes a great heavy-duty scrup brush. I've used it to give my green bin a good clean after it was pillaged by raccoons.

• I've covered my table with an old shower curtain before I start my seeds or any other sort of craft project. This is also great if you have kids and you need to protect your table from paint and glue.

• I keep and reuse travel-size bottles for shampoo, conditioner and body wash.

• I use newspaper as wrapping paper come Christmas time, or other festive events. It's also great to use when packing for a big move.

• Save the things you want to toss for a garage sale. You know the saying, "One man's junk is another man's treasure". Well, if you've ever held a garage sale you know this to be true. I'm always amazed at the stuff people buy. Put the money you make towards a nice dinner out. Or, better yet, donate the proceeds to your favourite environmental charity.

What's the most unusual item you've been able to repurpose? Have you made something totally useless into something you now just can't live without? Tell me how you've avoided sending something to the landfill, and you could win:

I'd go anywhere with this stylish buggy.

An oh-so-convenient President's Choice Green Stow Away Shopping Bag overflowing with PC GREEN products. Your stylish new shopping bag (with wheels!) contains:

• 8 jumbo rolls of PC Green paper towels
• 1 kg box of PC Green Baking Soda
• PC Green All Purpose Cleaner
• PC Green Coldwater Laundry Detergent
• PC Green Phosphate-free Dishwasher Detergent
• PC Green Floor Cleaner
• PC Green Multi-Purpose Cleaning Putty

Leave your answer here by Friday, June 26, and I'll announce a winner then. Don't forget, you have to be a subscriber to my blog to be eligible to win. Subscribe today!

A while ago, we featured a craft created by one of our readers. It's called Plastic bag craft: Two crocheted tote bags. This craft is a perfect way to use up old plastic shopping bags as you crochet them into useful, cute totes. One of our readers, Linda Steger from Prince George, B.C., loved the idea of recycling plastic bags (that would otherwise sit in landfills for years and years) and turning them into something useful.

Here's her plastic bag story:
"It started when a friend of mine who lives in Mackenzie, B.C. told me about the pattern. I thought it sounded like a great idea and she mailed me a copy.

After I had made my first bag, I made a posted a sign asking my neighbours if they wanted to help me go green and donate plastic bags. Also, searching on CanadianLiving.com, I found another lady asking for a copy of the pattern.

That was the beginning. And since then, I have had requests from what I refer to as my Bag Ladies Network (or BLN) from all over the world. Some days I answer requests for a couple of hours! It takes me so long because I chat with them and find out where they are from.

I have had a great time meeting women from England, Australia, South Africa, India, all over the United States and many, many from Canada. They have all promised to send pictures of their finished projects, with which I'm planning to make a scrapbook.

As for me, I called the head office for Additionelle and their store's customer service department is saving me bags. Their sister store Penningtons also phones me with two or three large bags full of bags that they get from returns. These are my prized possessions since they are very heavy plastic and come in dark grey, royal blue and shiny black bags with red writing. I also save shiny white Liquor Control Board bags (too bad I don't drink more!), Zellers red is cool, but their customer service says the staff take the bags home and use them for garbage and poop bags (and then throw them in a landfill? GASP!)

I'm overflowing with all the bags and am sorting and cutting them.

That's my story, maybe it'll be more interesting once BLN starts sending me pictures and we all have a few bags under our belts!"

Interesting story indeed! What a great way to use up those old plastic bags.

Here's a couple of photos of some of Linda's bags

And here's an image of a tote made by a BLN lady in Laval, Quebec

I love these bags and am (slowly) trying to make one. Admittedly, I'm not much of a crafter, but my sister taught my to crochet so I can make this.

Have you made this craft?  Let us know! Send an e-mail with a photo of your bag and a brief blurb about yourself to forums@canadianliving.com and we'll post a photo of your bag in the Green Living blogs!

If you want to try to make a plastic bag tote, here's the pattern.

Also, contragtulations to Angela who gave us some great green cleaning tips. She wins a copy of the book Green This! Greening Your Cleaning, by Deirdre Imus. Check out her tips here. Angela, send me a private message at forums@canadianliving.com with your information so I can send you your new book!

Today's Toronto Star ran an article (Green's carbon footprint) about the conundrums surrounding organic waste. Here in Toronto, we have a green bin program. Our green bins are meant for organic waste and are picked up from the curb once a week. It's a great program that has grown at a rapid pace (yearly, we toss 115,000 tonnes of organic waste into the green bin).

But because of this positive response from Toronto citizens, the program has begun to see some difficulties. Here are some of the problems: We use plastic bags to store the waste, so the green bin program contributes an obscenely large amount of bags to landfills. Also, because the program has grown so much and so quickly, our small organics processing facility cannot hold all the organic waste we produce. As a result, we've been transporting the spillover in diesel-burning trucks all the way to Quebec.

The City of Toronto website highlights how successful the project has been and how they're trying to implement organic waste options in multi-unit dwelling. There are currently 30 pilot projects under way. However, once buildings are able to separate organic waste from regular waste, our processing facility will be even more burdened than it already is.

It's no wonder this project is so overwhelmed - just look how much and how fast it's grown since its inception in 2002. I'm confident that Toronto will continue to work on ironing out all its kinks. Perhaps soon it will be mandatory to use biodegradable or paper bags on our green bins, just like they do in Durham and maybe the city will build more processing plants so we don't have to cart our waste to Quebec.

I can't wait to see what other incentives will be developed to help make our community greener

Read more:
• Canada's greenest communities
• How to start your own compost pile
• Guide to living greener