Use Your Trash
"One man's trash is another man's treasure." -- Anonymous

In the spring of 1947, Homer and Langley Collyer -- brothers, recluses, and pack rats-- were found dead in their New York City brownstone. Also found were fourteen out-of-tune pianos, three dressmaker's dummies, three thousand books, pieces of a Model T Ford, camera equipment, bowling balls, musical instruments, furniture, the rusted frame of a baby carriage, and rooms stacked to the ceiling with the results of nearly forty years of obsessive and compulsive hoarding. One hundred and three tons of it, to be exact. Rescue workers discovered Homer's body almost immediately, but it took another eighteen days to uncover Langley. His body was found decomposing under an old suitcase and three bundles of newspapers.

Clearly, the Collyer brothers thought all this junk was something worth hanging on to. And in a way, I can see where they were coming from. It's one thing to toss out a banana peel, but a car engine? Surely something so solid should be worth something! Using our trash as a philanthropic tool requires adopting a bit of a Collyer mentality -- not the hoarding urge but the part of them that saw value in garbage. You already know that your belongings can pack a philanthropic punch; now see how your trash can do the same.

Down to the Last Scrap
We fill our garbage cans with things that shouldn't be there -- recyclables, bulky and hazardous waste, as well as plain old household trash that could be reduced if we'd just make a few changes to our daily routines. In the U.S., we generate 230 million tons of garbage a year -- that's about 4.6 pounds of discarded stuff per person per day. Despite raised environmental awareness over the last twenty years, we still have a long way to go. Consider this: Less than a quarter of garbage in the U.S. is recycled. The rest of it goes into the country's approximately 7,000