how do you recycle junk mail?

[forgotten_aria]

We used to use paper bags from the store, but the store we just shopped at had no paper bags. Lunch bags are too small, leaf bags too big. How do we contain the junk mail for recycling?

Comments

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Shop at other stores? trader joes, whole foods, wild oats, and johnny's foodmaster certainly have decent-sized paper bags.

Another option is to tie your recycle paper in twine.. Or put it into a cardboard box?

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

I don't think twin will work for sqirmy junk mail.

The box idea I think is our fall back.

[nacht_musik]

Whole Foods and TJ's both offer paper bags for groceries. We buy (just barely) enough food from them to give us enough paper bags to recycle our
house's junk mail. Which means we're reusing paper bags in a necessary way, and are using that many fewer plastic bags.

I'm not sure how to deal if you only shop at stores that only use plastic bags. You could buy paper grocery-sized bags someplace in bulk?

[katybeth]

Or ask around to see if any friends acquire more paper grocery bags than they use.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Or on freecycle.

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

Lunch bags are too small? I use bags that I get from take-out subs, take-out salads, etc. I just roll the paper items length-wise and they go in as a tube. If I have a lot of paper, I use several bags.

[honeyartichoke.livejournal.com]

Our grocery store uses plastic bags, but we have a hoard of paper bags from whole foods and trader joes (where we shop VERY infrequently), that are used for recycling paper and cardboard - so far it hasn't run out, but it gets refilled occasionally when we get stuff at above mentioned stores. Sometimes i also get paper shopping bags from random stores or food takeout places, which get used for recycling too.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

What food store doesn't offer paper bags? I thought even star had them, and if they changed that i am sad.

In any case, you can have some of ours if you want, I think we end up with a slight surplus because we seem to like trader joe's.

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

I use cereal boxes sometimes.

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

You can use their own business reply envelopes. Just stuff the whole package including the enevelope and everything back in it and send it back to them. They have to pay for the mail as well as commercial garbage collection...

When I'm feeling particularly evil I use American Express's business reply envelopes to mail them MBNA applications and vice versa.