Going green with trash and a sewing machine
capri-sun school Honest Kids Include USA
Every day, Heidi Conley is turning trash into treasures.
"I'm crazy about recycling," said the Shirley resident, as she sat on her front porch, surrounded by unique fabrics and tote bags made out of recycled trash.
"I buy most of my fabrics and other materials at yard sales, except the big buttons --those are new. I made a bunch of pocketbooks out of dungarees last year," she said. But this year, her passion is making colorful, well-constructed tote bags out of drink pouches.
Conley came into the business of recycling trash following a struggling career in home economics.
Conley grew up in Lunenburg and went to Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster to study home economics. But by the time she graduated, Proposition 2-1/2, which limits tax increases in Massachusetts' municipalities to 2.5 percent, had gone into effect, and home-economics classes were among the first educational programs to be eliminated from school budgets.