I just got finished walking to the bank during my morning walking-of-the-dog, the multitasking I’d written about in a previous post. While I was out and about, I noticed two things that I’d never noticed before.

First, I caught the name of the company that collects plastic shopping bags outside the SuperFresh supermarket near the bank–and read that this company Hilex turns plastic bags into recycled plastic shopping bags, not the Trex decking that I assumed all bags were recycled to produce. Second, I discovered that the bench outside the SuperFresh said “Please take a seat on our recycled egg cartons.” (Environmental lifestyle expert Danny Seo recently wrote on Rethink What’s Possible about a similar bench and described it in an eerily similar setting to where I saw this bench. I wonder if he lives in my town?)

In the span of 20 feet I’d come across two examples of forward-thinking initiatives that took one thing and made it into something else. I wonder how many other things I pass by or see in everyday life that are also made of something else, or which easily could be? For example, I know that my cereal boxes are made from recycled paperboard and many of the magazines I read include recycled paper. That’s so, well, boring. I mean, paper into paper, been there, done that.

Where are the innovative uses–or should I say, reuses–or products in our every day life? If I were an entrepreneur looking for a new business venture, this would be where I was focusing my efforts–coming up with new products made from old things.

What we need more of these days are things like fabric made from recycled soda bottles, such as what Polartec does for its fleece products. Or, speaking of soda bottles, how TerraCycle turns soda bottles into bird feeders and containers for its organic fertilizer. (This isn’t so much recycling as reusing but genius nonetheless.) Actually, TerraCycle uses a brilliant method to get its bottle supplies. It encourages school groups to collect empty soda bottles for the company’s use and in return the company donates dollars to the schools. Recently, it expanded its reuse campaign to include yogurt containers, juice pouches and energy bar wrappers. It will use the latter two items to make fashion accessories. How cool is that?

I’m sure there are more companies like this out there, and I’ve just got to do a bit more digging to find them. In fact, I just found an “EcoMall” website that seems to list companies that specialize in recycled products. I’ll be checking that out later today. In the meantime I wish more companies would offer consumers like us financial incentives to submit our used paper, plastic and other recyclable materials to become something else. Somehow I’d bet that if there were dollars and cents on the line, the percentage of Americans recycling on a regular basis would go way up!