I work in an office that deals with paper clips every day. I have a huge box filled with random sizes- more than I will ever be able to reuse. I’ve googled around but can’t find any information on recycling these annoying things. My local recycling center makes no mention of paper clips, and I can’t throw all of these in the shred bin to get picked out along the recycling process cause there’s just too many.
Any advice?
Stuff them into an aluminum soda can and take them to the recyclers along with the rest of the pop cans. When the loaded can gets to the can checker/crusher, it will be ejected from the stream of good cans. The staff there will then throw the can into the random scrap metal bin.
Or you can just mail them to me. The factory I work in has several bins for metal salvage in which I could dump them.
Or donate them.
I’d bet your local schools would be glad to not have to buy paperclips.
Leave the box of them in a public area of the office where other office workers can take them, too.
The larger ones can be bent into pretty good picture hangers. (Zyada used them in her cube in the office, and we hang her framed photos when we do arts-and-crafts shows.)
Or you can make one of my favourite multi-purpose tools: Straighten out all but the inner loop, and bend a small right-angled hook into the straight end, about 1/8 inch or so. That’s good for any sort of crevice you want to scrape out, cleaning hair from your drains, and many more things.
What to do with the other 500 is up to you.
Or store them in a regular metal soup can and toss them out in your recycle bin. The next time you cut the lid off a can leave a tab so the lid stays attached or bend the can sides in so the clips don’t spill out everywhere.
I’ll try **Magiver’s **solution. My local facility has a tin can recycling area so that’s perfect.
Alpha Twit, I’d send them to you but then recycling would be rather pointless after shipping 5 pounds of scrap!
Thanks all.
Well, geeze, don’t try to throw them in with aluminum. They’re not! That will just piss off the workers. :smack:
Put them into the recycle bin with the other steel, as suggested and is proper.
I have seen jars of paper clips at thrift stores before. Goodwill might not take them, but I’m sure you can find some thrift shop that will take them as a charitable contribution.
Donating them to schools would be equally good. Ask around your office - I’m sure there are parents who can make sure they wind up at the right place.
You might also offer them among your coworkers, or slip them back into the supply closet. I suspect that someone will find a use for them.
Link them all end to end and make long chains of them for decorating a christmas tree?
other than that, I got nothing =(Everybody else had all the good suggestions =(
Recycling useful goods is wasteful. Give them to somebody who can use them.
You might have to burn more gasoline driving than this is worth, but I would imagine any scrap-metal yard or even an automotive junkyard would take them off your hands.
Last time I was at a scrap metal yard, I had brought a large load of copper wire (I save and recycle all my scrap wires; I’m a car-electronics installer), and a damaged aluminum car wheel.
I also had with me a disassembled shed made of some kind of sheet steel. They didn’t pay me for it, but they did direct me to a pile where I could toss it…at least it got recycled.
Give them to a bending robot for endless fun.
There’s no recycling area for steel or metal - just tin cans. I don’t want to create more work for the recyclers…
We already reuse as many paper clips as we need at the office; we get so many it’s impossible to keep up.
I will ask around about schools. It’s a hell of a lot of paper clips though.
Nitpick: There are no tin cans anymore. There may be some tin coating, but the cans are steel. The name remains, but they are still the same thing your paper clips are made from.
Here in Phoenix they will take almost anything steel - coat hangers, nuts and bolts, shovel heads, whatever you have, including small appliances.