Weekly waste war: Turn Dryer Lint into waterproof fire starter

This is the first post in what I hope to be a weekly series based on combating (that's right, ass kicking!) waste in your daily life. Even the smallest and easiest things you can do to waste less can have the biggest impact, because everyone can do it, whether you're rich, poor, a moron or a rocket scientist. And it's much more important to look at what we can do and just do it instead of looking at what we can't change or thinking we can't make a difference.

After that incredibly motivating speech, you're probably ready to live 100% sustainable and never waste an ounce of anything in your life, but let's start out small, with dryer Lint. Probably the easiest and most common thing to reuse in your house. It probably has one of the smallest impacts on landfills and such, but it's not just about the waste. It's about turning something that you normally would have no use for into something useful. Whatever it is, this offsets energy and money being spent through what you've created or partially created from reusing something that you thought was useless.



The most useful thing I found to do with your dryer lint is: Turn it into a waterproof fire starter! These are surprisingly effective for how simple they are, easy to make and not very time consuming (with the exception of collecting the dryer lint. Which does not take as long as you think once you start saving it!) They also involve re-purposing cardboard egg cartons, leftover candle wax, floss or string. They will also save you from pulling out your hair since starting campfires will no longer take half the night and most of your sanity to ignite.

An instructable from At29035ft clearly explains how easy it is to make these nifty little fire starters, perfect for camping. backyard fires, indoor fireplaces, or witch burnings.


How to: Waterproof Dryer Lint Fire-Starter

One simple way of getting rid of dryer lint is to simply throw it in your compost pile! It'll break down as fast if not faster than everything else. You can do the same with pet hair, your hair, dust bunnies, and the contents of your vacuum bag, as long as you don't use toxic cleaners on your carpet, and anything else that isn't compost approved. If you don't have a compost pile, read my post on How to build an indoor (or outdoor) compost bin.