The younger generations call them hoarders, junk collectors, and worse, but for older citizens in particular, recycling has been a way of life for as long as they can remember -- and certainly long before it became a fashionable buzzword.

Generations ago, entire families automatically recycled, largely for economic reasons, but partly because of wartime shortages. Also, in those less materialistic times, the absence of today's abundance of consumer goods made necessity the mother of invention.

There was also a genuine, universal respect for the environment. It was a point of pride to keep household refuse to a minimum, and the garbage can was regarded as the receptacle of last resort.

Despite the passage of time, there remains in Bermuda today hundreds of homes whose drawers, cupboards, shelves, countertops and cellars are filled with re-usables.

This being Recycling Week, Lifestyle looks at what people saved then and now, and the re-uses to which they put everyday items. It also tries to discover why, despite living in today's throw-away society on a sound economic footing, the original recyclers continue to subscribe to the "waste not, want not'' philosophy.

The following is a composite of many stories, and where direct quotes appear, the names have been changed at the request of those who made them.

Emily is an octogenarian whose home is crammed with the results of faithfully following the lessons she learned in childhood: never to throw anything away that "could come in useful some day''.

Born into a family with many children and only one breadwinner, she recalls flour sacks being bleached to remove the logos, and then sewn into garments, aprons and pillow cases. Similarly, sacks which came in pretty prints were also made into clothing.

Emily remembers her grandmother doing the same thing, and making flour sacks into what she called "scullery cloths'' to wipe the "colly'' (soot) off pots and pans cooked over kerosene. It would never do to get the good dish cloths dirty.

Mary recalls the recycling of wedding dresses.

"It was the custom, particularly among the Portuguese, to cut up the wedding dress and make it into a christening dress for the first child,'' she says.

In the days before cellotape, stores tied up parcels with string. Once home, this was carefully undone and kept. Sometimes the pieces would be knotted together and rolled into a never-ending ball. At others, each piece was wound around the fingers and tied individually so that in times of need there were a variety of lengths and strengths to choose from.

Good Friday was a bonanza for string collectors -- the tether of a downed kite whose origin was unknown would be carefully wound up on a piece of stick for future use -- on next year's kite, as a guide for cutting a hedgetop straight, tying up plants, and more.

In the era before designer storage containers, glass jars had more lives than a cat. Perfect for home-made jam, they also held everything from hardware to cosmetics, nuts to keys, and bobbins to buttons. In fact, there probably isn't an older home in Bermuda that doesn't have a jar with thousands of buttons in it.

When clothing was worn out it was recycled as dusters or rags -- but not before buttons, zippers, hooks and eyes were snipped off and stored.

"I inherited my mum's collection of all these things, I'm 60 years old, and I don't think I've used six buttons in all these years,'' Anita confesses. "I can also remember my mum's rag bag. She had a special use for everything, and always said cotton underpants were best for shining windows.'' Brown wrapping paper was always recycled, and its uses were unlimited. Perfect for mailing parcels, it also made fine drawer and shelf liners. Wrapped around baking tins, it kept fruit cakes from drying out in the oven, and in the days before box springs it prevented rusty bedsprings from marring mattress bottoms.

Children used it to make little two-stick kites, and, in conjunction with a warm iron, it soaked up grease spots and candle wax on fabrics and carpets like magic. Patterns for clothing, seat cushions and more also owed a debt to brown paper, and its protective powers for books was unsurpassed. Many a new home was sketched out on it, as were crayoned childhood fantasies.

Paper bags, perhaps the ultimate expression of brown paperism, were -- and remain -- limitless in their recyclable uses. Discreet and strong, they enclosed all manner of contents, from groceries to lunches, laundry and trash.

They doubled as bookbags, temporary rain hats, and even overnight "luggage.'' Today, with sand and candles, they are used as garden and pathway lights, and are excellent for crisping crusts when re-heating fresh rolls or French bread in the oven.

Most collectors of brown paper bags have a special affinity for them, and store them neatly folded. Janita is a case in point.

"I have a cupboard filled with nothing but paper bags. I simply can't throw them out,'' she confesses. "If I get a nice bag from, say, a jeweller or perfume shop counter, and especially from overseas, I not only don't want to throw it away, but I don't want to use it either! It's embarrassing really.

"In fact, it's gotten to the point where I now carry a big handbag or knapsack and tell people at source not to give me a bag. I think of all the trees that went into paper bags, so I use them over and over and over again. I never throw out plastic bags either because I think of the environment. I know it's a ridiculous mindset, but what can I do?'' Newspapers have always been king in the recycling chain. Then, as now, they wrapped garbage, protected surfaces, lined bird cages, absorbed household floods, preserved the shape of hats and handbags, as well as wet shoes as they dried, made perfect firelighters, and even fire logs, stuffing for Guy Fawkes effigies, fans and fly swatters, crazy hats for kids and training puppies as well as forming the basis of crafts like papier mache m.

Rare was the rubber band that came through a domestic door and was jettisoned.

Useful for everything from keeping up sock tops to securing braids and stinging limbs in sibling skirmishes, they could be seen stored around the bellies of bottles, dangling from cupboard knobs, or crammed into an recycled container.

Fancy cubes of paper and designer message pads were unknown. Instead, the backs of envelopes were recycled. Scrap paper was also created by trimming the unused portions of letters, as well as using the backs of greeting cards, circulars, old bills and anything else with a blank side.

Greeting cards, if carefully used, could also be recycled. To this day, Sarah says she can't bear to sign a greeting card, knowing that it will only be used once. Instead, she signs a separate piece of paper and slips in into the card with instructions for recycling! "One went 'round and 'round so many times it eventually ended up being sent to me,'' she laughs.

Christmas was the recycler's ultimate dream. Wrapping paper was very, very carefully undone, ironed and stored for years to come. Real ribbon underwent similar treatment, or was re-used as hair bows. Undaunted by progress, the recyclers of old now preserve dozens of stick-on bows in boxes and bags for future service.

Christmas cards not kept for special memories were cut up to make gift tags or even tree ornaments.

Christmas puddings were cooked in recycled coffee or other tin cans, and tied up with strips of cloth from condemned sheets and pillow cases to keep the lids on and provide lifting handles when hot.

Towels past their prime got new lives as floor cloths or potholders, and worn sheets were made into everything from pillow cases to dolls' clothes. Soft socks were great for polishing waxed surfaces, leather shoes made good "firewood,'' and the wool in old home-knitted sweaters was unravelled and rewound for the next ones.

Old mop and broom handles made good curtain rods, shutter sticks, dowelling, furrow-makers for planting seeds, and of course kindling.

Don't trash it, stash it Out of doors, kitchen scraps, such as fruit and vegetable peelings, bad food, egg shells and more were thrown into a quiet corner to rot and make compost.

Poultry and animal manure was used as fertiliser, the seeds of dead flowers and vegetables were gathered for next year, and cold tea was used to water house plants.

Tea leaves were also thought good for house plants.

In today's world, modern materials and attractive packaging have proved irresistible to die-hard recyclers.

To the hoarding tastes of a lifetime have been added indestructible towers of styrofoam supermarket trays, plastic margarine, yogurt and ice cream containers and foil pie pans. Uses for these things range from cat dishes to bake sales, picnics and refrigerator storage.

Disposable is rarely applied to dinnerware, glasses and cutlery.

Plastic bags of every shape and size form soft, and sometimes musty, mountains in drawers and cupboards awaiting a thousand re-uses from enclosing wet and smelly garbage to protecting shoes and breakables in suitcases.

Aluminium foil is washed, folded and stored in the refrigerator for further use. One recycler even confessed to washing cling film and hanging it on the line to dry -- along with the tea bags.

Twist 'em ties have surpassed rubber bands as the quickie fastener of choice.

Old film containers are handy for storing small items, and are used by some veterinarians to dispense pills.

Unusual cosmetics jars and wine bottles also lead multiple lives. Many are kept for their eye appeal; some are used for travelling, while others double as vases and candleholders.

But why, in what is essentially a throw-away society, do these inveterate recyclers continue to store any and everything under the sun? "It saves money, and besides, you never know when something will come in handy,'' was the consensus.