Reduce, reuse and recycle.  That’s what we’re taught to do which means we’re going full circle.  I recall reading in Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder how everything was reused as many times as possible.  There was very little waste.  That’s what I try to do in my personal and business life.  Boxes are generally cut up to be reused as packing for orders or used as storage for books.  I actually received an order from a company and they had stickers on the outside of the box saying they are trying to lower their carbon footprint by reusing boxes.  Nice, I thought and promptly cut it up to reuse as packing.

Just in case you want to know, and even if you don’t.  Every order comes with a Suz’s Space bookmark which will make it fairly challenging to lose your page.  The bookmarks have little magnets to hold the two parts together with the page in between.  The books are then put into a freezer bag (sorry, this is brand new) and then taped closed.  It’s not that I don’t trust Australia Post, it’s just that accidents can happen and parcels can fall into water.  I then cut two pieces of cardboard a little bigger than the size of the books and tape those to the top and bottom of the books.  I tape them very tightly to stop the books moving.  If it’s an expensive item it will then be wrapped in bubble wrap (more tape!) before finally being put into a pre-paid satchel, or an envelope or even being wrapped in brown paper. I’ve only had one problem with this and that’s the time I put the freezer bag on the outside of the cardboard rather than the inside.

How do you Reduce, Reuse and Recycle at work?