You know to separate your paper, plastic, glass and cardboard from your regular trash, and put it out on recycling day. But did you know that there are other ways that you can recycle beyond your curbside trash hauler? Here are four fresh ways, just with paper alone, that you can recycle or reuse paper.

1. Been noticing those green-and-yellow “dumpsters” in church and school parking lots lately? No, those aren’t new places for you to put your trash. They are paper-only recycling receptacles run through Abitibi’s Paper Retriever program. It rewards non-profit organizations with cash, based on the tonnage of paper collected in each of these bins. Your paper is still recycled–Abitibi makes newsprint–but now the recycling is benefitting a local school by helping it to buy new playground equipment or a community organization by giving it money to purchase uniforms for its sports teams.

Here’s what you can drop off in the Paper Retriever dumpsters:

• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Mail
• School & Office Papers (including shredded paper)
• Catalogs

2. Bring your newspaper to an animal welfare organization. Many rescue places use folded up newspaper, not just old towels and rags, to line the cages and pens of the animals they are nursing back to health. My daughter and I discovered this when we brought an injured wren, found flailing on our front step, to a wild animal rescue place near where we live. While most people think about bringing them linens, what places like these really need is newspaper–so they told us. (We also wrote them a check for $50 to help out since we had no newspaper to offer.)

3. Reuse paper for packing delicate items or shipping something. Don’t waste your money on packing peanuts or bubble wrap. Shredded paper and balled-up newspaper can do an adequate job of something breakable you need to ship or pack away, such as dishes or Christmas ornaments. Better yet reuse your cardboard egg cartons as additional padding to ensure nothing moves around in the box, and everything stays in one piece.

4. Sprinkle shredded paper in a compost pile. If you’ve started composting your food scraps, you may have noticed that stuff inside the bin can get a bit goopy–especially if your ratio of green-to-brown matter is a bit off. To dry things up, sprinkle some of the paper from your shredder into the compost pile, and stir it up. Sure, I end up spilling some out of the shredded paper out of compost bin from time to time, making my backyard look a little like the aftermath of an explosion at the confetti factory, but that’s all right. Once the shredded paper brings the moisture level down, decomposition will speed up. Don’t have a shredder? You can rip newspaper into shreds and mix that with your compost, too.

Have any other tips for thinking outside the recycling bin with paper? Post a comment to share your idea.