if you celebrate Christmas, you can decorate them to make Christmas tree baubles.

some great examples here:

http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/forpreteens/l/bllightbtrt.htm

you can take off the metal on the bottom (carefully!) and remove the innards.

Then wash thoroughly.

Use as vases (when stoon in springy egg cup things, they look incredibly modern!)

OR

You can take the black bit off the bottom and remove the insides. Again, wash out thoroughly. Then, get some wire (coathangers…) and wrap it round the metal grippy bit at the bottom, so that the bulb is facing downwards.

Get a few, do this and connect them together to make different types of vases. You can affix suction cups using wire too and then suction them to windows with flowers in them (or small houseplants in soil maybe…)

I remeber seeing a lamp shade in ikea made from old lightbulbs the classic type of lightbulb I mean.

It was a clear bucket shape with a hole in the middle for the workjing lightbulb and you could fill the bucket bit with whatever you wanted and they had used old lightbulbs. It looked quite cool.

Use them to make various things. All the info on: http://www.allfreecrafts.com/decorations/lightbulb.shtml

[…] We’ve already looked at reuse ideas for old fashioned lightbulbs but what about recycling for the supposedly greener variety? […]

Energy star will take them back… florecents / energy saving lights etc must be recycled because they use mercury in them…

As reported at www.treehugger.com, designer Helen Gifford, and her company HelenBilt, create beautiful lamps from used incandescent bulbs: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/helenbilt_putti.php

I’m planning, after a little research on appropriate glues, to try something similar with the old light bulbs I’ve collected over the years. Wish me luck!

Posted on French blog today: this lady made fantastic vases
http://www.espritcabane.com/recup/ampoules-vases.php

very trendy!

cover them in paper machie and when it dries hit on the ground, this will break the inside and will become a rattle, paint it and sell it

I’ve heard you can put then out for the council to collect and they will turn them back into glass!

My council has confirmed that they can be recycled at the Home Waste Disposal centre :)

To find your nearest recycling point for Energy Saving Lightbulbs, enter your postcode into the recycle-more bank locator search tool and tick the ‘Gas Discharge Lamps’ box. This will give you all the address details and an interactive map of the nearest locations.

sorry forgot to add in website URL: www.recycle-more.co.uk

“matt
August 21st, 2007 at 2:24 am

cover them in paper machie and when it dries hit on the ground, this will break the inside and will become a rattle, paint it and sell it”

Please tell me you are joking?…oo! I know! Lets make a paper based container full of broken glass, then market it as a childs toy! Fantastic idea!…

Seriously though, most local authorities provide facilities for various forms of recycling, get onto thier website and have a mooch around, they may not provide recycling for mercury containing devices, but there are also private companies out there who do (for a small fee), some I think operate a service where you can post the item to them, sure i’ve seen that somewhere…time for some googling again.

Stu ;-)

Citijunk offer recycling services, junk
removal and waste disposal throughout London.

Alternative fuel source for the fossil fuel by making use of the oil extracted from jatropha curcas seeds, which is then converted into biodiesel for industrial and automotive uses.

[…] kinda already covered this before - in with spent energy saving bulbs and old lightbulbs in general - but I just spotted this very cool reuse of old strip lights so thought it was worth […]