What's In Your Wallet?

No matter what you answered...money, lint, phone numbers of your next three prospective dates, chances are you also have a lot of plastic. Number 3 PVC plastic that is (a petroleum byproduct that will not decompose), because most credit cards, gift cards, hotel key cards, etc. are made of it.

When you are done with such cards, your first instinct may be to cut them up and throw them in the landfill, and you are not alone. According to Earthworks, a PVC recycler, "Over 75 million pounds of PVC material from plastic cards enters our waste stream each year."

So instead of cutting up your cards and throwing them in the trash, mail them to Earthworks System, a company that turns old cards into sheets of PVC that can be used to make new cards. It will cost you nothing more than postage, and it's another ingenious way to turn your potential waste into a new resource.