by Pamela Kay

Created on: April 26, 2009

Recycling takes time and as the saying goes, "time is money," but what if there were ways to combine recycling and saving money without using a lot of time? There are, and the answer, for how to save money by recycling, is found in yet another saying; "A penny saved is a penny earned." The more times we recycle an item, the more we save and therefore earn.

Every day, in millions of homes around the world, good serviceable items are thrown into the trash and dumped into our landfills, because the owner no longer wants or needs them. Not only could many of these items be used by someone else, but most of them could be repaired, used for another purpose, recycled into new products or returned to the earth as food for all living things.

*Setting Up For Recycling

Sometimes you have to spend some money to make some money but with recycling, it's a minimal amount of outlay for a maximum return. Large outdoor containers can be purchased for recycling items or you can make your own out of recycled plywood. Some cities even furnish them.

Smaller bins can be placed under counters or in your laundry room. Think you don't have room? If, some one offered to pay you $50.00 a year to house them, you'd make room, but you can save even more than that.

*One Man's Trash

One man's trash is another man's treasure or so the saying goes and by the number of weekend yard sales in America, it must be true. Young couples or anyone on a tight budget can completely furnish a home by shopping at yard sales and thrift stores.

Even a second hand mattress works if you spray it with a bleach solution, dry it in the sun and use a zippered mattress cover. The savings: several hundred dollars! Wooden furniture can be refinished, furniture can be recovered,

*Used Up-Recycling At It's Finest

Finding a new purpose for an unwanted or unneeded item is the ultimate form of recycling and will often save us the most money. Buying only natural products will enable us to save the most money. Take for example a small cotton sock and its many uses before it is ultimately "used up."

Socks will eventually be outgrown and too ragged to be used as socks, but there are many other purposes they can serve such as; a homemade puppet or for packing objects, after which it can be used as a dust cloth, then a cleaning rag and finally cut into strips and added to a compost pile.

*A New Purpose

Finding a new purpose for an item can be fun as well as profitable. Old windows and storm doors can become a new greenhouse with just a little

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