We’ve had an email from Amy, asking:

I have a large kiddie pool with a crack in the bottom that is not repairable. How can I recycle this?

She doesn’t say whether it’s an inflatable one (which are the most common type in the UK) or a more solid one - the “crack” suggests the latter - so feel free to make suggestions for either.

(We’ve covered smaller inflatables before and in a similar water-holding-thing-no-longer-holding-water, we covered fish tanks last week.)

(Photo by ssdg4773)

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John and I were having one of those wacky, romantic-comedy-esque moments the other day over some jacket potatoes. He was grinding some black pepper onto them and joking about giving me an excessive amount but the joke turned around on him: once he’d ground LOADS over my potato, he moved over his dish, did one grind and the whole bottom fell out of the grinder, sending tons of whole peppercorns flying all over his dinner. As I said, a rom-com moment (well, I laughed anyway).

The plastic that held the grinder together had shattered and we’re lucky we spotted all the little clear pieces in our food rather than eating them (at least we think we spotted them all…). The rest of the grinder is fine but we’re reluctant to glue it back together given the way it shattered, in case it happens again over food.

So what else can we do with it? John thought about maybe turning it into a percussive instrument but we’ve probably got as many of them as we need. So suggestions?

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We’ve had an email from Tracey about reusing an aquarium:

My boyfriend’s fish recently all went away to fishy heaven and now he has a ten gallon fish tank now sitting in the basement until we can figure out something to do with it, we could just give it to value village or goodwill or something but I thought it would be neat if there was something we could make out of it. Thanks!

Poor Tracey’s boyfriend’s fish :(

We’ve actually had two fish tanks from Freecycle over the years - both cracked ones so no good for fish but used for John’s brother’s suitcase gecko - so Freecycle might be an option along the lines of “value village or goodwill”.

But how about reuses? It might be a bit heavy to be used as a general storage but flipped upside down it could be used as a mini-greenhouse (although venting might be a problem).

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by kraaft)

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We’ve had an email from Valerie:

Recently, the uneven brick front steps to my house were knocked out in order to put in a sidewalk. Now I have single bricks, pieces of bricks, chips of bricks, and sections/blocks of several bricks mortared together. Almost all of the bricks still have mortar on them. Can anyone suggest a practical use for these?

We salvaged some bricks when a friend removed a 1970s style brick fireplace recently* and plan to use them to make a small (two-brick high) wall to hold back some shrubs off our path - the shrubs will hang over the wall so it doesn’t really matter what the bricks look like. We also have a random old brick on top of our compost bin to stop the lid blowing away. I hear that they’re also useful to put at the bottom of garden tubs - to stop them being as easily stolen/blown over.

But they’re mostly just ideas for full bricks? What about bits of bricks and chips?

* “recently” is an utter lie. It was about two years ago and they’ve been sat in our garden since then. We’re in a tidying the garden phase at the moment - hence the recycling bin thing I wanted ideas for the other week - though so maybe they’ll get used soon…

(Photo by jazza)

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We’ve had a message from Leanne, saying:

I have an MP3 Player that no longer works and 2 digital cameras with cracked screens. Both still work but you cannot view the object as you are taking the photo. Do you know anywhere I can recycle these?

I’d be tempted to put the digital cameras on my local Freecycle group because someone may be able to use them for something that doesn’t need a screen. If my (admittedly incredibly geeky) friendship group is anything to go by, there are always people that want to fix a camera to a kite/dog/radio-controlled helicopter and might be able to use a screenless one instead of risking their brand new 8megapixel camera or whatever.

Aside from that, in the UK (and the rest of the EU), I believe these types of things are covered by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive so the shop where you bought them may have a “bring back scheme” to take care of the recycling - or your local household tip might have a special bin for that sort of thing.

Any further advice or reuse suggestions?

(Photo by nkzs)

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