I recycle bags, boxes, toilet rolls, fabric, bottles etc. I make clothing from old T Shirts. By combining them you can make comfy casual dresses and track/yoga pants. They are easy wear and lovely to relax in, especially in the winter time. I cut up plastic bottle for all types of containers, reuse packets, especially brown paper bags. I recycle old curtains, pillows and duvets to make cushions, sheets and covers. I make old handbags, belts or wallets from old leather pieces. I make journal covers from old cardboard. I recycle my old shoes by covering them in lace or paint, something different. There are just so many things one can do. I live in the city and do not have any place to garden, or I would recycle much more.
In Scotland, shops must charge for (plastic) carrier bags now. This has been done in Ireland for a number of years and has limited bag use quite dramatically. I have always taken a bag with me when I go shopping, so it doesn't really affect me. Evidence thus far seems to be that a lot of people still don't reuse their bags. The charge is tiny (5 pence) and personally, I'd like to see it higher. The world is drowning in a sea of plastic and I'd like to see bags charged at a prohibitive rate.
We've got the same system in South Africa, though some shops charge for bags and others don't. I've never been quite sure why there seem to be different rules for different shops. We always reuse our bags and never pay for them because we manage to collect enough freebies to use, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people are willing to pay for new bags every time they go shopping. And I somehow doubt that those people bother to recycle their bags either.
Indeed - there was someone in front of me in a shop the other day. They bought one small item and a carrier bag. As I left the shop, I saw them throw the bag into a litter bin. It takes some kind of special talent to be that witless.
I only recycle PET bottles and cans. I do this because there is a place which accepts them and gives out (humble amounts of) money in exchange for them. So, not only do I do a good deed for the planet, I also get paid to do it!
I hate to throw away anything that I believe will contribute to polluting the world but sometimes I don't know how to dispose of those things, so I tend to keep them sitting around the house in the hope that I'll find someone who has a use for them. Among those items were some door handles that I had to replace recently because they weren't working properly any more and I didn't know how to fix them. As fate would have it a lady who walks the streets trying to sell hand made products came to our door today and while she was chatting to my Mom she mentioned that she needed door handles for a house she's building. I was delighted to see mine go to somebody who can actually use them.
Even before the consciousness of ecology came to fore, we were already recycling paper and plastic grocery bags. We would fold it into a small piece that would fit the drawer and re-use it when occasion requires. For used bottles, we collect it and give it to the junk shop or to the garbage collector. We always believe in taking care of our environment so we try to save what we can. However, the plastic grocery bags now are biodegradable that they seem to self-destruct after 1 year. So some of the plastic bags in our collection are not usable anymore.
I began to recycle plastic bags back in the mid-90s, folding it carefully into small pieces much similar to you @Corie Henson, and I'm still recycling it, but since these are used for trash or disposable items, I don't longer care to fold them; I roll them around two of my finger to make a small pin-pong ball that I put into a large Tupperware container that I found in a nearby dumpster, from where I also rescued and old 1970s Osterizer blender that serves much better than my modern Hamilton Beach I use the bags where the breads comes to store food too, and these are the only bags I still fold carefully, LOL I have also some furnishing items that I have brought either from dumpsters or have found abandoned somewhere down the streets, but I have turned into a "selective" trash picker; I only bring home things that are fully functional and in acceptable good conditions, like a porcelain table lamp which is a 2-feet tall doll which was disposed because her hand was broken; fixed with ease with modeling clay. This lamp was left in the bench of a bus stop within a trash bag! I don't longer pay attention to useless things or items that might be transformed into original ones unless they have enough potential, like the inner plastic molding of a refrigerator door that was easy to bring here from a close market, which I easily converted into a tall standing cabinet for my bathroom. In addition, I sell to a recycling center all of the plastic bottles and aluminium cans that I generate or that I may find in my way when going out there. I don't longer recycle glass because it's very heavy, so I put this into bags for someone else to do it, same as my used clothes, cardboard, magazines, books and newspapers because, as I said, I am now a "selective" recycler, but mainly because I don't have too much space here to store stuff.
The building I live in requires us to recycle all cans, glass and paper and cardboard. A detailed sheet showing the recyclables and the throwaways was issued to each tenant. It's amazing how many bags of garbage still winds up in the recycle bins. Back in happier times, I made extra money scrounging dumping areas for aluminum and other scrap metal. Discarded lawn furniture, auto hub caps, junk lawn mowers etc.
Just to add, there is a noontime show here called Eat Bulaga. They deal mostly with the masses with contests in the studio. One segment is they pick a house in the urban area and shower the house owner with gifts totalling more than 100k pesos, around $2,500 in cash and in kind. You can guess that it's the number 1 noontime show here. By the way, one of the host is a senator. In their segment where they go on location to pick a home, they conduct a sort of contest. The public is asked to bring a specific number of plastic and specific kind of plastic - examples: 15 empty plastic bottles, 30 pieces of used plastic bags, etc. That segment is all about recycling. The first 5 to bring the items (not sure of this number) would receive 10k pesos each, that's $250. And the plastic that were brought would be used to manufacture plastic chairs that the show would donate to school classrooms. It's a noble way of teaching people how to recycle.
Here in Hawaii we have the HI5 where we have to pay 6 cents extra on some beverages bottles & plastics. Then we can redeem 5 cents at recycling centers around Oahu. Some recycling centers take all kinds of things and I see people keep a trash bag of one kind of cans like corn beef cans and they get quite a sum for it. We recycle old things for donations to Cerebral Palsy or local chapter of Big Brothers & Big Sisters. We leave our bottle and plastic donations for Kaiser Hosp. donation recycle bins.