• Wood chips can be reused in many ways around the home and garden.wood chips image by robert mobley from Fotolia.com
  
  Wood chips can be recycled in numerous ways around the home and garden. Whether using wood chips as mulch, creating garden pathways, cooking or heating, reusing wood chips is an excellent way to make less trash. Wood chips can be given away or sold as animal bedding or for gardening needs and add smoky flavors to food if used for cooking.
  
  

Cooking

• Wood chips are excellent for smoking meats and fish. Each type of wood will add its own flavor to food. Maple and fruit woods are popular cooking choices for poultry and ham. Apple, cherry and pear woods are the best for giving ham and poultry a mild, sweet flavor. Mesquite is the strongest flavor wood available and has grown in popularity over the past few years. Alder wood is traditional for smoking salmon, due to its light flavor. Hickory lends its strong flavors to lamb and beef. Oak is also used for smoking meat, though its flavor is not as strong as hickory's. Pecan wood is similar to hickory but with a subtler flavor.
  
  

Animal Bedding

• Donate wood chips as bedding for shelter animals.cats image by Zbigniew Nowak from Fotolia.com
  
  Wood shavings are popular choices for animal bedding. Fruit woods like aspen and popular are among the safest woods to use for bedding as they give off a light aromatic scent that won't overwhelm pets. Pine chips can be used as bedding only if they are kiln-dried first. Walnut shavings should not be used as horse bedding as walnut is toxic to horses. Cedar should also be avoided as bedding for small mammals since it gives off aromatic hydrocarbons that can cause respiratory problems in such animals. Wood chips as animal bedding can often be sold at farms and farmer's markets or donated to animal shelters.
  
  

Much and Other Uses

• Use wood chips as mulch.Digging in the garden image by dquinnan from Fotolia.com
  
  Wood chips work as long-lasting mulch in gardens. They help maintain soil temperature and moisture and control soil erosion and weeds. Since wood chips take a long time to decompose, it is recommended that they be mixed with organic mulch like food scraps when applied around plants. When wood chips decompose, microorganisms take soil nutrients that are used to help plants grow. Walnut and cedar wood chips should be avoided as mulch materials and compost as they emit plant-killing chemicals. This is also true of wood that has been chemically treated.
  
  Wood chips are excellent for creating garden pathways. They eventually become a silvery-gray color. Wood shavings can be used in place of Styrofoam peanuts, bubble wrap and other synthetic packaging that is not environmentally-friendly. Throw wood chips in wood burning units to heat a woodshop, outdoor patio or any area of the home. Wood chips can often be used in craft projects such as Christmas tree decorations and bird houses and feeders.