How can I reuse or recycle anti-perspirant bottles?
We flipped to roll-on ones from aerosol anti-perspirants for environment reasons – both big, out-there environment (the aerosol bit) and little, in-here environment (the spray quickly made the bathroom unpleasant as it deodorised your lungs) – but now we’re left with lots of roll-on bottles instead.
I suspect the bottle and the ball are different types of plastic so am wary to throw them in the recycling bin – anyone know if they can be recycled? Does it help if you pop the ball out first?
But better than that, are there any reuses for them? Either complete or in parts.
And what about stick deodorant containers (the narrower, ball-less ones)?
Best Suggestions
- Reuse: Use the rollerball action in other useful ways: pop the ball out with a spoon and fill the bottle with thin PVA glue instead of buying glue sticks, or bleach to control its application during laundry.
- Recycle: Some bottles are made from easily recyclable plastic – check the bottom of your bottle to see if you can recycle it in your area.
- See the comments below for more suggestions and ideas
fill them with a mixture of glue and glitter to make glitter pens for kids. Add a few drops of food colouring too. The glue has to be quite thin though.
You can probably make the flour glue from the other article, but make it really thin.
The problem with your last idea though, is that flour glue will only hold for a few days. So it would have to be for a one-day project, not to store. You may want to try rice glue instead. I haven’t tried it, but heard that it would hold for weeks.
I keep too in my stationery cabinet at work, one filled with thin pva paper glue, the other just filled with water. I used them for envelopes and stamps and the like that aren’t self-adhesive. Saves licking or looking for pritt stick.
-SaraR
my wife does the same thing with belach so she can just put a little amount of it on stains on clothes beforfe washing them.
I Clean them and then refill them with sun screen for my children to use at school.
Anyone have ideas about what to do for stick deoderant, the dry powder kind? They can’t get a second life as a glue-roller-on I don’t think…
There is a website called instructables.com and a member on there use a deodorant tube as housing for an LED flashight he made. I know you can’t go making a flashlight every time you have a deodarant tube, but it’s one thing.
roll the stick all the way back down, then
melt some old crayon bits with similar colors i.e. reds/pinks, blues, greens etc. in seperate pots or in old plastic containers in the microwave. pour the melted mixture into the clean deodorant tube and voila!
fat crayons for little fingers.
i might mention that i have a tiny old broken-handled pot that i got for free at a garage sale, so i’m not using a nice pot that i eat from… although cooled crayon will come off a pot…
Does anyone know if the deodorant/anti-persperant bottles (plastic) are recyclable at all? I throw mine away too…don’t want to trip up the recyclers but it seems such a waste.
I also want to recycle them. I use gel deodorant that comes in the same oval tube as solid sticks. I keep saving the empty ones, with hope that they can be recycled one day.
When I dropped and shattered my crystal deodorant stick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alum), I got an old deodorant bottle, put a few shards in and filled it with water. voila!
Glass bottles are easier to refill as the plastic housing for the ball just lifts off. For plastic bottles, you have to prose the ball out with a spoon.
I do the same as Mark with the alum :)
use the ball for ping-pong?
I use the roller balls as eyes in my craft projects. I do a lot of paper mache so I’ll try filling one with mache glue and see if it is less messy than using a paint brush.
Be careful with putting any former deodarant containers in the microwave, check there is no metal in the mechanism to make it rise and fall.