I've been thinkging a lot about my grandma lately. If we really have entered the second Great Depression, maybe it's time to adopt some of the ideas she learned from the first. For example:

A canning jar was never just a canning jar. After its life of preserving vegetables from the garden, it was meant for better things: a nontoxic alternative to Tupperware, a party mug, packaging for our bag lunch on soup days. 

Single-serving yogurt containers went into the garden, not the trash can. With four holes punched in the bottom, they were seamlessly transformed into seedling planters.

When she wasn't salvaging aluminum takeout containers for later use as free pie pans and ovenware, Grandma was doing all her shopping at the local bulk-foods store, cutting back on packaging, transportation, and, above all, costs.

She made sure that her kids and grandkids were charter members of the Clean-Platers Club. I found out from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the food scraps thrown away by Americans every day are enough to feed 4 million people.

Waste not, want not. We used to roll our eyes at Grandma's prescriptions. But these days I'm thinking she was smart-not to mention an eco-warrior before her time.