Affordable Hair Gel Without the Plastic Packaging or Chemicals by Rebecca Rockefeller My dancing daughter has her first public performance this week and that means I’ve been tasked with taming her curly and rather wild hair into a well-mannered, high ponytail. The hair falling down is allowed to do its thing, but everything around her […]

Save Money and Reduce the Plastic Packaging in this Old-Fashioned Fun by Rebecca Rockefeller It’s a fact that kids (and a lot of adults) love to blow bubbles. It’s also a fact that the most of the plastic bottles, caps, and bubble wands that come with store-bought bubble solution are not recyclable. This doesn’t mean, […]

By Liesl Clark It worked for a week or two and then the carpets started sliding again. I’m talking about the silicone caulking trick I raved about in this post here. Now I’m ready to admit it just didn’t stand the test of time. Perhaps our wood floors get too dirty, or the children running […]

By Liesl Clark I’ve eyed the useful mason jar soap dispensers made by creative people and thought I’d try to make one myself. Was it difficult? Not at all. This DIY project takes a few minutes to pull off. All you need is a mason jar with a wide mouth lid, a push pump from […]

Presenting the Trash Backwards Web App! We’re celebrating America Recycles Day with the launch of our curated database web app. We hope you’ll join us, using our web resource to go beyond recycling to embrace the even more important Rs, Reduce, Reuse, and Re-Think. We have a guide here to help you get the most out […]

by Rebecca Rockefeller Is it possible to make a no-sew t-shirt bag in 10 minutes? A bag strong enough to carry groceries? A bag you’ll want to be seen with? Yes. Most definitely. As part of our ongoing Trash Backwards DIY Busters series, I’ve been looking for fast and easy reusable bag tutorials to test. […]

by Rebecca Rockefeller Make your own bag from old materials you’ve got on hand and you’ll kill two landfill waste streams with one stone: Your used materials will be given a new life, and you’ll be able to pass on single-use bags wherever you go. Here at Trash Backwards headquarters, we have quite the assortment […]

By Liesl Clark We tried to find a fashionable reuse for our old toothbrushes and failed. Perhaps the idea of a plastic wraparound bracelet in the shape of a toothbrush is fundamentally flawed fashionably in the first place. Forget about it. We’ve tried to make one, following the directions on most websites and found that […]

by Rebecca Rockefeller I’ve been seeing photos of beautiful vases made of burnt-out incandescent bulbs, and I wanted to see if I could make one for myself. It was hard to believe that my rather gray frosted bulb could become a thing of beauty; I was worried it would become a pile of glass shards […]

Here’s a DIY we tested, along with our verdict. Today I thought I’d try my hand at a popular DIY project that many have touted as a wonderful kitchen solution to seal a plastic bag. It’s that plastic bottle cap, bottle rim and plastic bag thingy that you see pinned all over Pinterest. Now, I’m […]