There’s a good chance that you have more than one plastic card lying around your house. The key that you forgot to turn in when you checked out of the hotel, the identification badge you got at the retreat you went to and the gift cards that only have a few cents left on them all end up your junk drawer.

You hate to toss out plastic because you know it’s bad for the earth, but what else are you supposed to do with those cards? Re-use them around the house to make them functional. Here are some ideas for doing that:

• Decorate both sides with a favorite quotation and turn it into a useful bookmark.
• Scrapbook it. If the card is related to an event you went to or a vacation you attended it would fit in perfectly with your photo scrapbook.
• Collage both sides and make it an Artist Trading Card.
• Mat and frame them. Surprisingly, if you take a few particularly decorative cards, add a mat and frame them, you can actually have great art for your walls.
• Turn an old gift card into a gift tag. Talk about re-gifting!

Perhaps if you get really into the idea of plastic card recycling, you can make a deal with your local plastic card printing business to get your hands on their unused cards for free!

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