Mine has been an actively recycling household for at least twenty years, and I don’t just mean turning in soda bottles for cash. (I know that reference dates me; it can’t be helped.)
I’ve understood the concept a lot longer than that, of course. I listened to stories of what my parents’ parents saved and reused during the Depression, I read in novels about folks who patched holes in shoes with old newspapers and, in fact, insulated log cabins with old newspapers. I walked through an antebellum mansion last year in which the horse-hair insulation had been supplemented with pages from postwar magazines in one of its many remodels. And although my fave dictionary tells me the word recycle was coined in 1925, the concept of reuse is much, much older.
I particularly enjoyed reading this article at Open Culture about old (thirteenth century, say) manuscripts used to line—and stiffen—a bishop’s mitre and clothing on religious statues in a convent.
Apparently, it’s a rich tradition, putting old pages to good use, once they start feeling like they’ve outlived their intended purpose. The bishop likely didn’t know the specifics on the material that made his hat stand up. I’ll bet the sisters of the German Cistercian convent where the dress above originated were more concerned with the outward appearance of the garments they were stitching for their wooden statues than the not-for-display lining.
You might be a little bit horrified at the idea of an ancient hand-lettered parchment manuscript being cut up and reused, but scholar Erik Kwakkel (his Twitter feed is a delight) tells us in this article at his blog MedievalFragments,
When Gutenberg invented moving type, handwritten books became old-fashioned overnight. All over Europe they subsequently became the victims of recycling …
Moreover, as I learned in this article from the Conveyor, the research blog of the special collections at the Bodleian Libraries,
Book recycling was common in the late fifteenth century … Because this was a period of religious reform, liturgical texts became outdated particularly quickly, accounting for their use as dress lining.
This becomes an Update* post when I remind you that even today books are recycled into other forms of art; I’ve written about this before in “This Old Thing?” and “Are Books Sacred Objects?” and “Thought for Food” and “Books and Art.” Before their words become books, writers recycle: a scene or a character cut from one manuscript might find its way into another.
I’m fortunate that I can choose to recycle not out of necessity but because I was raised by frugal parents who couldn’t give up the old ways in a time of prosperity, in spite of the fact that such frugality might have been ridiculed. Now I live in a time in which recycling has taken on a cachet of hipness (something I’ve never been) … but having said that, I’ll just note it would take a dire situation for me to tear up my books. Just sayin’. 🙂
* Because it’s summer and because I am slammed with work (not a bad thing) and because slammed with work means less time to write the kind of thoughtful blog posts I want to write, I’m writing a series of updates to reconnect you with my archives. But summer’s almost over, friends.
Tweet: My dictionary tells me the word recycle was coined in 1925, but the concept of reuse is much older.
Tweet: Book recycling was common in the late 15th century, even though that seems shocking now.
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