Cat and dog toys are easy to make out of items you have laying around the house. Old fleece blankets can be cut up and braided into rope toys, Paper towel rolls can be decorated with feathers, ribbons, etc. The options are endless and free. 

With the popularity of thrifting, we thought of the idea to gather our gently used stylish clothes and pass them on to needy kids in our area. The school councilors have agreed to help us get these clothes to kids in need in the district. This project has been super fun and we are excited to continue to work on it!  So far we have passed on over 100 outfits, shoes and belts to local school kids, but we have collected much more!
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We were able to use glass jars that would have gone into the recycling bin to create beautiful vases to hold tissue paper flowers for residents of a local nursing. The residents have been kept inside due to Covid-19 quarantine and needed some cheering up.  We used extra scrapbook paper and tissue paper to create flower arrangements for 60 residents. We also included a note to let them know they are loved.  

Over the course of a few months, the club put out a 
request to friends and family over social media to 
drop off new but unused left over birthday party 
supplies and small toys. We assembled 22 "Birthday
Boxes" to donate to the food local pantry. Each box 
included a cake mix, frosting, cupcake pan and liners,
decorations of many kinds, candles, plates, napkins,
juice boxes and small toys.  With only the purchase of a few food items, all other items were repurposed to create the boxes. 

We decided to take on the large task of turning as many small plastic toys we could find into beautiful fun wreaths for the guest room doors of our local Ronald McDonald house in Columbus, Ohio. There are 144 guest rooms and 10 common rooms.  This was no small task to do on this on such a large scale, but we really wanted to be able to accomplish this for them.  First, we put out a call to all Club members and their friends to gather and donate any small toys they might want to dispose of. These toys would typically make their way into the landfill.  After some experimentation, we realized that we could attach the toys with glue guns to old disposable plates that people had at their house.  We made the plate backing double thick and by glue gunning the plates together. After that, we let each member create the wreaths however they liked. They could choose a theme, a color scheme, or whatever they thought looked good. There is really no wrong way to do it. We used extra bottle caps from our community art project to line the wreaths and add a pop of design. We got these delivered just in time for the holidays, and hopefully the kids staying at the Ronald McDonald house enjoyed looking at them and knew someone cared about them.

The Club was invited to our community's Autumn Arbor Festival. While rain slowed down foot traffic at the event, the kids enjoyed making rain makers out of used paper towel holders and dried beans. We also had used materials to create an upcycled art picture out of bottle caps, buttons, scrap paper, cardboard, old ballons etc. Both projects are easy to create with materials in your own home that would otherwise go in the landfill. We themed our community art around a giant tree, since this was for an Arbor Festival. Everyone created their own part to make the art special and unique.

Looking for an easy way to help the environment in your own community? Grab some friends and clean up the trash in your town. This is exactly what we did last weekend. Everyone we met along the way, both business owner and pedestrians, were very thankful.

This is a great way to some extra use out of those old t-shirts every family has sitting around. We collected all the gently used t-shirts that we could find. Using an easy no-sew pattern from Pintrest, we transformed over 200 shirts into grocery store reusable bags. Reusing and reducing waste. Club members kept some bags for their personal use, but the rest will be sold to raise money for environmental organizations.