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 Denim is like wine and cheese; it gets better with age. By repairing your loved jeans—either professionally or by yourself, you can extend the time you enjoy them, save money, lower your environmental footprint, and kick their style up a notch.
Read more here: --https://denimhunters.com/how-to-repair-jeans/ Photo by Susan O'Donnell  Making your own reusable cloth gift bags is super easy. With a sewing machine and fabric scraps or ends bought on-sale at a fabric store gives you all the material you need to have a fun variety of patterns and sizes for your bags. Once the bags are made, wrapping takes mere seconds: simply drop the gift into the bag and tie with a ribbon. This eliminates all expense and waste from paper and tape. You can even make the bag part of the gift!
To make your own cloth bag, cut two pieces of fabric ½ larger all around than the desired final size. Hem the top edge of both pieces. Line up the two pieces of fabric with right sides facing each other. Sew around the three unhemmed edges and turn right-side out. To include a tie, cut another piece of fabric or a strip of ribbon about 2 feet long. Before sewing the sides of the bag, fold the tie in half and place the folded edge between the two halves of the bag along one edge and about 1 inch down from the hemmed edge. Sew the three sides of the bag as before. Wrapping gifts in attractive, reusable pieces of cloth, known as furoshiki, is a centuries-old tradition in Japan. Furoshiki are versatile, because they can be used to wrap gifts of varying shapes and sizes. Bandanas, scarves or cloth napkins can serve as ready-made furoshiki, but you can also make your own wrapping cloths out of your favorite fabrics – even larger scraps. Learn more about this technique here. Photo by Susan O'Donnell  Swarthmore is taking the first steps toward joining the movement to reduce the use of single-use plastics. Starting October 1st, vendors at the Swarthmore Farmers Market will stop giving out plastic bags for purchases. Remember to bring your re-usable bags when you visit the Market. You can also reuse plastic bags that you have already accumulated. You can also consider other ways that you can reduce your use of plastic bags and better protect your produce as a result: bring hard-sided containers, such as mason jars or dairy tubs, to bring home berries, cherry tomatoes, or other delicate produce.
Single use plastic shopping bags are hard to recycle; they are not accepted curbside and must be taken to participating stores with specific recycling bins for bags. Too few plastic bags end up being recycled. Instead, they pollute the environment, choke waterways, and clog recycling sorting equipment. States such as New Jersey, Delaware, New York, and Washington State, and local municipalities such as West Chester and most recently Media have already banned merchants from handing out plastic bags for purchases. For the first few weeks of the transition at the Swarthmore Farmers Market, donated reusable bags will be available for shoppers who don’t have their own bags. In preparation, the Market is accepting donations of re-usable bags. There will be a bin available at the Manager’s Table at the market each week to drop off reusable bag donations. Bring your extra reusable bags to the Market to help out with this effort! Photo by Susan O'Donnell  Frustrated with those tiny ends of soap that seem like they could be useful but are too small to produce much lather? Save them up and reconstitute them into new bars. It takes only a few minutes to set them up. Give them a few days to dry, and you have new soap!
Adapted from: http://www.instructables.com/id/Reuse-Your-Old-Soap/ Photos by Susan O'Donnell You are likely familiar with the ideas of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, but www.52climateactions.com suggests adding Refuse and Repair to the list. "We need to be doing more refusing, whether it’s excess packaging, cheap goods that won’t last, or just simply something we don’t need. Take what you have already and make it last or give it a new lease of life. Almost everything we buy and use in our daily lives has a carbon footprint: from its manufacture to its transport. And almost everything we buy ends up being thrown away at some point. It goes to landfill, becomes litter, pollutes our oceans, contributes to the emission of greenhouse gases, or harms the planet in other ways. We need to cut our consumption to reduce our environmental impact. Single use items make no sense for our wallets or the environment."* Think before making purchases, consider good quality that won't need to be replaced quickly, and "use your spending power to tell companies what you want and don't want. For example, items that are built to last or those with less plastic packaging."* A practice to use to reduce the quantity of items that you purchase is to give yourself time to reflect before buying and "give yourself at least a day or two to think it over. You might not need it as much as you thought."*
Another way to reduce your consumption is to repair items that you have to give them a longer life. Alternatively, give them a new life with a different purpose. "Upcycling, i.e. giving a new lease of life to a neglected item, is an art movement in itself, with tutorials online and articles in magazines about everything from creative use of garden planters to large-scale artworks made from recycled objects. But you don’t have to be artistic to upcycle: simply take something and alter it for another practical use i.e. an old pallet into a shelving unit. Your junk may well be someone else’s treasure, so before you throw it out check to see if anyone else could make use of it through online sites such as Freecycle, Preloved and Gumtree." *https://www.52climateactions.com/refuse-reduce-reuse-repair-recycle/full While waiting for the water from the tap warm up for your shower or to wash dishes, as much as 1 – 2 gallons of clean, potable, usable water rushes down the drain. Put that water to good use around the house! Catch the flow in a bucket or pitcher, and use it to water houseplants or an outside garden, or add soap and use it for mopping. You can even use it to flush the toilet!  Photo credits: Gosheshe, Flickr; Austin Kirk, Flickr
 Tired of washing loads and loads of laundry? Annoyed with trying to decide what to wear each morning? Julia Mooney, an art teacher in NJ modeled an alternative by taking the One Outfit, 100 Day Challenge. Wearing the same dress for 100 days, she raised awareness about consumerism, fashion, and sustainability. She posted on her website:
photo credit: Aqua Mechanical, Flickr “Let's think before we buy, wear, discard, and buy again. Can we buy clothes used? Buy responsibly? Buy LESS? Learn to sew a few things? (Stop shaking your head. Everyone's great grandmother used to, so you can too. Boys too.) Do we really need so many new outfits? Are we just perpetuating a culture that defines us based on what we're wearing rather than what we're doing? What if we spent our energy trying to BE good, interesting humans instead of trying to LOOK good and interesting? ” According to clothing industry sources, 40-80% of GHG emitted during the lifetime of clothing is from washing, drying, and ironing. Overwashing cloths wears them out faster, leading to a shorter lifespan and earlier disposal. The dress company wool& offers a gift card incentive for completing a similar 100 Day Dress Challenge. Their merino wool dresses are odor resistant and quick drying, making them suitable for continuous use. Over 1500 women have completed their challenge, many finding that they needed to wash their dress infrequently if at all during the 100 days of continuous use. Use this time of gift giving to encourage the use of reusable items instead of their disposable, single-use counterparts. Invest in durable items that will last a long time. You can find lots of examples in past aFewSteps green tips:
Instead of buying gifts new, gift shop in your house and give unused or gently used items11/19/2021
 We all have stuff lying around our houses that we never used or used very little. Vases, decorative bowls, pitchers, picture frames, clocks may have collected a little dust but may otherwise be in great shape, maybe even still look new. Consider the friends and family you shop for – maybe you know someone would love to have that item and would get more use out of it than you have been getting. This holiday season, reduce your purchases of new things by making an agreement with like-minded friends and family members with whom you exchange gifts to go shopping in your house. Find appreciative new homes for things you don’t need and give thoughtful gifts without using extra resources.
Photo by Ravi Shah, Flickr Instead of throwing out a pair of shoes that you like, look into having them repaired. It may cost less that you think. Antonia Frazan reported on www.businessinsider.com a rule of thumb from a cobbler: the bottoms of shoes can be fixed, so as long as the upper part of the shoe is not dried out or cracked, look into having them repaired.
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