My niece Elizabeth is just learning to read, so she's probably not come across Thomas Edison's observation that it's not hard to be an inventor. "All you need," he asserted, "is a good idea and a lot of junk."

If Elizabeth unwraps a birthday present, she won't let her mother throw out the ribbons or the wrapping paper. She uses them for her art projects. She uses everything for her art project. Recently, she asked her mother if she could leave a note for the tooth fairy, scheduled to pick up her tooth that night. When her father crept into Elizabeth's bedroom to exchange tooth for dollar, he found the note: "Dear Tooth Fairy," it read. "Please leave my dollar. BUT DON'T TAKE MY TOOTH!"

Her insistence on the use, and not the abuse, of natural and manmade contains a message. If you're working in today's workplace, you have numerous opportunities for re-cycling, re-using, re-building, and respecting the abundance that America provides its citizens.

Here's a re-cycling tip, taken from my book Richuals at Work. Ask soon-to-be-retirees for an old shoe. "Plant" the shoes in a small plot of land near the entrance to your building. Put potting soil in them and plop in a few seeds. Post a small laminated sign with the name of the retiree and the dates of his or her employment. Then let the flower-power begin to grow on the Retirees' Walk of Fame.

Remember the 500-year-old words of Johannes Kepler, "Nature uses as little as possible of anything."

Dr. Marlene Caroselli, author of 55 business books (see Amazon.com) is an international keynote speaker and corporate trainer for Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and professional organizations. You can reach her at mccpd@frontiernet.net.