The nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

Long before there were recycling bins, tree huggers, and global warming fears, there was my grandfather, Aurthur B. Nichols. Back in the 50's or 60's he tried to start a recycling business that, unfortunately, never really got off the ground. While that was before my time, I remember being at his house and seeing bags of crushed cans. Not aluminum cans as one would see today. He cleaned out and crushed every tin can that came into the house. Before the cans went into the bag, he'd always be sure to peel off the labels. There were green bean cans, corn cans, and other assorted variety of can in those bags. While I never knew what exactly he did with those cans, I knew that he thought it nearly a sin to pitch them into the garbage.

Grandpa also did not believe in throwing out perfectly good uneaten food. He always had a compost pile working, which he used on his gardens. He specialized in growing a wide variety of Lilly's.

While I wasn't blessed with grandpa's green thumb, his concerns about waste did rub off a little. As I was carrying limber toward the dumpster this afternoon, I got to thinking grandpa and about how much wood is wasted in the construction industry. Not that I would call myself a tree hugger, but I think it's a shame that all the scrap lumber winds up in land fills (or construction fires). A product called Oriented Strand Board (OSB) is a building material made of wood chips that are glued and pressed into a sheet (something like plywood). Currently, the manufacturing company grinds up a whole lot of trees every year to produce the OSB. I think it would be great if someone could think up a way in which all the construction scrap could be rounded up, sent to the mill, and ground into OSB. There would be less material for the land fills and, maybe, a few less trees cut down every year. That might make grandpa happy (if he were alive to see it).