i’m trying to do my part and make sure that i recycle everything that i can, or at least find a way to reuse it. i recycle my #5 containers of cream cheese, margarine, etc, but have nothing to do with the lids, which even if they are also #5 they are not accepted in my recycling.

any ideas of what i can do with them? typically i just put them under plant pots, but i can only have so many plants. and i thought about making coasters, but i don’t really use coasters, so i’m open to some new ideas!

When we get this type of tub, we tend to keep both the lid & the tub to reuse for leftovers instead of Tupperware or use as small storage boxes in other parts of the house (eg, we’ve got one for batteries, one for fuses and one for shoe polish in our misc cupboard). But there are a lot more uses for the tub part than the lids so I imagine there are a lot of lids going in the bin — let’s see what we can do with them :)

Funnily enough, a lot of my ideas are the same as the ones from Monday’s handicapped tags – add them to your tool box for use while decorating/painting, cut them up for plant markers in the garden, cut the rim off and shape the remaining plastic to use as a dough scrapper etc.

Anyone got any more original ideas though? :)

(Photo by cogdogblog)

Hello, I’m a paper crafter and was a Stampin Up demonstrator and use the Stampin Up snail adhesives or the tombow roller adhesives.

Anyhow, to refill these things you have to buy another plastic mechanism that has the tape already in it. With all the paper crafters all over the world I’m sure there are lots in landfills. Wondering how they can be recycled for the plastic.

For non-paper crafters like me, the picture is of a snail adhesive refill – as Carmel says, tape already enclosed in a hard plastic shell.

As for actually recycling it, the lovely people at Stampin Up tell me it’s a whole different set of plastics (details below) so I wouldn’t have thought many people will want to pull them apart to recycle as many bits as possible.

Sometimes I’m a bit worried about always suggesting craft projects as reuse ideas because I know not everyone is the crafty sort, but the people who buy these already are crafty or they wouldn’t be buying them so … any fab craft ideas to re-use or repurpose these babies?

Or any other suggestions?

Ever since I made that first batch, I’ve been on the look out for what I can use as moulds this time around. Last time, I had two old food trays for bar soaps, but when I ended up making a lot more soap than I’d originally intended, I grabbed whatever else I could find – some shaped fruit trays (small hand soaps), an old round ice cream tub (too wide when sliced into discs so had to cut them into semi-circles, which was a bit odd) and the square edged plastic bottles the olive oil had come in (nice size hand soaps, but it was awkward to get it out). (The latter two can be seen in the picture.)

All sorts of packaging has been subject to my “would it make nice soap?” eye. A few weeks ago, I was reading about someone else’s soap making on Simple, Green, Frugal and she mentioned using poster tubes (with the bottom sealed up) to make nice sized round soaps. As we’ve not had any posters or the like delivered recently, we haven’t got any of those but it got me thinking about similar cylinders: a litre-ish, straight-ish juice or pop bottles would probably about the right size, although it’d probably be awkward to get out like the olive oil bottle. That led me down another juice line: John has got a bit of an obsession with chocolate soya milk at the moment which comes in tetrapak containers – that would be a nice size for square bar soaps and be easier to cut out…

Anyway, long story slightly shorter, what else can I reuse or recycle to make either interesting shaped soaps or simple practical ones? If you make your own (cold-process) soap, what do you use?

Do you have any upcycled moulds that you can reuse again and again rather than destroying (like would happen with the poster tube or my juice containers)?

Or on the flipside, anything you’ve used that you’d urge other people not to use?

(A few notes for non-soap makers: the soap mix at the point of pouring is about body temperature for “cold-process” soaps so plastic melting is not usually an issue, but it is incredibly caustic at this point, and will react to metals other than stainless steel. It’s poured into the mould when it’s hit “trace”, a gloopy rather than full liquid stage, and left to set in the moulds for a few days, then popped out of the moulds to continue “curing” for a few weeks before use.)

• With the major gift giving time of the year looming in the near-distance, I love this idea of reusing colourful children’s pictures to make gift bows instead of using generic plastic ones. Of course the same idea can be applied to any old paper – as the tutorial shows black-on-white newspaper text looks pretty cool too.
   
• I’m always a sucker for stuff made with drinks cans but these flowers are rather cute – I especially like the painted ones.
   
• Tinplategirl emailed recently her new tutorials site about working with tinplate – the smooth heavier-weight metal from various large tins & cans. The site includes a number of free videos introducing the craft – where to find the materials and how to work with them – and how-to PDFs for making all sorts of things (some free, some costing up to $9.95). A great resource for people wanting to move on from working with the more malleable drinks can metal.
   
• And speaking of large tins, this tiered unit made from old biscuit/chocolate tins has been around for a while now but I thought it was worth mentioning because it’s a lot of fun and useful.
   
• Another thing that’s a bit old but feels newly relevant given the sudden switch to autumn this week: how-to recover an umbrella frame. Great for revamping a brolly or fixing it if it gets torn – double up your green points by using old fabric (an old tent? old synthetic clothes?) for the umbrella and reclaiming the best bits of the original fabric for other craft projects (a water resistant swimming bag? or to make foam bath cushion?)
   
• Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, do check out WeUpcycle.com, which started as a 30 day/30 upcycled things project but is now a wider collection of upcycling ideas. No how-tos but lots of inspiring, pretty pictures.
   

Have you seen any fun or interesting reusing or recycling projects recently? Or have you got anything you’d like to show off of your own creation? Do leave a comment below!

We designed a lid for the Bonne Maman crême brulée cup that we usually through away.

Here you can see a short movie about it:

While I’ll admit the lid is very cute and well made, it didn’t occur to me that it needed one before reusing — my boyfriend John’s mum used to buy us frozen crême brulées from a door-to-door dessert salesman (…really) and the ceramic dishes have been part of our kitchenware ever since – one is currently employed as tea-bag dish and the others are in regular circulation as dipping sauce or olive stone bowls. We’ve also had similar glass ramekins from Gu desserts in the past: they’re my go-to bowl for making small amounts of marinade or spice mixes, or cornflour paste. And from a REDUCE point of view, which is the most important of the 3Rs, they’re great for refilling with homemade mousse or what-have-you.

Do you reuse glass or ceramic shop-bought dessert cups for anything special?

Would love ideas to reuse the Stax potato chip cans.

We don’t have Stax over here in the UK but my friend Google tells me they’re like Pringles, but packed in a plastic tube instead of waxed cardboard.

Some of the Pringles ideas will still apply: they’re great for storing knitting needles and paintbrushes, can be used as storage for homemade biscuits, and is useful as a small poster tube – for either storing documents without creasing or sending through the post.

As these bad buys are plastic (rather than card) so water-resistant, they will lend themselves to other reuses too – I’d imagine they could easily be turned into a bird feeder (cut a couple of feeding windows about a third/half of the way up, add a perch at the bottom then fill with seed), could be used for storing dried goods in the kitchen or as storage for small kids’ toys (eg lego or jigsaw pieces) or crayons.

Any other suggestions?

First I want to comment that this is a fantastic website! Everyone in the world should be accessing it.
My question is this:

I’m recycling plastic spray bottles to put pure, herbal cleaning products in. Is there a way to make sure these bottles are clean and free of chemical residue before I reuse them? A way to sanitize them first?

If I was going to use it for another cleaning product, I probably wouldn’t go overboard with cleaning it, just a washout with water or something, (unless the original product was very bleachy or something that would react with my new product) — I personally wouldn’t mind the chemical residue dregs for that first refill. If I was reusing the spray bottle for something else (eg, as a water spray for plants) though, then I’d probably wash it out more thoroughly (a few rinses of hot water) – but still probably not to a level that I’d class as “sanitizing” it so I don’t know what is needed to do that.

(My boyfriend) John uses baby bottle sterilising tablets when he’s cleaning plastic bottles for homebrew – and often has sterilising fluid leftover once his bottles are clean — it is, admittedly, a very weak bleach solution but is apparently stabilised so safer than normal bleach and doesn’t need rinsing off feeding utensils/bottles before they’re used. It seems like overkill to whip up a new batch of the fluid to clean out a cleaning products bottle but if you have it leftover from another use anyway…

Any other suggestions? How much effort do you make to clean out cleaning product bottles before reusing them?

I’ve recently been struck with the foil linings of snack bags, and even dog food bags. Has anyone used these to create something solar, such as a cooker? What items have been put to solar use and how?

Making a solar cooker is on my to-do list for this year but I’ve not done it yet (and probably missed the hottest, sun-powered days – doh!) so I can’t advice on that. Anyone else got any experience making those? I was probably going to make something like this cardboard one to start with.

I also wonder if they’d be useful as soft mirrors behind plants, to reflect a bit of the light to the non-sunny side of the plant — a similar idea but, hopefully, without the cooking!

Any suggestions or tips for Melinda? Or any other solar related ideas?

We just got married (yay!) and while we tried to keep the waste to a minimum, we have ended up with about 100 personalised wedding cake boxes leftover. Not sure how that happened! They’re just card but I’d like to reuse them anyway but didn’t know what to do since they’ve got our names and wedding date on them. Any ideas?

Are they pretty card (unlike the boring white ones in the picture)? If so, the non-customised bits could be reused for any general craft purposes. Although like with wedding dress we discussed a few years ago, it would be nice to use it for keepsakes rather than just … I don’t know, very fancy shopping lists ;)

Could they be turned into postcards for wedding present thank you notes – or used to make a “thank you kit” (a couple of small photos and a note)? A friend of mine sent out cheap USB storage keys with lots of photos from the day on them – candid snaps from friends as well as official ones – and a cake/favour box would be the perfect size for that.

Or to be super cute, how about splitting them between the two of you and writing each other messages for your future anniversaries – predictions of what will be or “IOU” promises for the long distant future?

Any other suggestions?

First off, I absolutely love your website and all the nifty and creative ideas your community finds.

Now for a confession: I am a bookworm. I typically go through 100+ novels a year without breaking a sweat. In an effort to try and green up my hobbies I’ve stopped going to the used bookstore as often, as it is a twenty mile drive, and when I do go I always buy in bulk. I’ve also switched from Amazon to thriftbooks.com. They’re consistently cheaper, and they reward you for buying used books out of the same location.

My problem? Amazon always uses boxes, even if it was three or four of them per order. My new website sends my books in one large plastic bag (picture enclosed) that is numberless as far as recycling is concerned. The bags in question (I’ve amassed six so far) are 12×16 inches and have some minor holes from the shipping process. The texture of the bag isn’t conducive to making it into plarn, as it stretches out very easily. Any other ideas?

Hi fellow bookworm :)

The first thing you should do is email thriftbooks and explain your problem – they might not take action and change to cardboard (or similar) straightaway but the more people who complain about it, the more likely they are to change at some point — so join that chorus.

If they’re in good condition, and have been opened neatly with scissors, they can be reused for their original purpose – as a slightly smaller mailing sack next time you need to send something out. Unless you send a lot of things though, they may quickly mount up.

When we get those type of bags (and actually there is one on my desk right now that needs reusing!), we tend to use them as bin liners – obviously holey ones aren’t going to be good for small/wet rubbish but they’re fine in most circumstances.

That’s not terrible creative though – any other ideas?

Would anybody have any ideas for reusing the bags that stock feed comes in? They are some sort of plastic and not recycleable.

Funnily enough, I had this on my to-do list already as I’m starting to be overrun with the things too – and I’ve only got six small chickens, so I can’t imagine how many are generated by people with lots of animals/birds. (Mine are the heavy-duty flat plastic types – we’ve covered the woven plastic type ones before.)

The things I already do with mine:

• refill them with bedding & litter when cleaning out the coop. I bag it sometimes rather than tipping it all into the compost heap so I can give it to friends/family as fertiliser. Such a lovely gift! ;)
• use them to line the wooden planters I make. (I do this with some hesitation for fruit/veg containers as I don’t know what plastic it is so there may be some leaching issues.)
• use them as rubble sacks – they’re not quite as strong as actual rubble sacks but still pretty useful

I also know some people use them to “waterproof” ceilings of hen/duck houses, and I have a plan to build up the floor in our coop, and will cover it with these bags to make it easier to clean. Away from chicken stuff, I’ve seen people using opaque bags as weed barriers around trees.

Any other suggestions for ways to reuse them? Or any advice on recycling?

One thing I would say, as ever, is try to reduce your collection of them – look to see if there are any paper-bagged alternatives. If you’re storing the feed in a dry place, the paper getting damp shouldn’t be an issue. The heavy paper could be composted or recycled. Any other advice?

Enough!! I now have enough dosing devices for each child in a classroom…. but what to do with them? Tried poking a hole through the side, adding twine and making a bird feeder, but it kept flipping over. Needed some technical refinement… too much for my puddle brain. So folks please help me out!

I hadn’t heard about these dosing device but by the looks of it, they’re the new version of ye olde washing powder dosing balls but according to the only tiny picture I can find of them, more of a bowl than a ball, and apparently it “contain[s] an integrated soft plastic sphere”, whatever that means. (Is that right?)

Firstly, it’s obvious but since “reduce” is the most important thing to do, it’s worth repeating: really try not to collect any more. Liquid laundry detergent has a far bigger carbon footprint in packaging and transport costs – the gel is supposed to be a bit better on both accounts (and does promote itself on the idea that it can be used effectively at low (below 40C) temperatures) – but still.

As for the stash that’s already been collected, I’m struggling for ideas – either on how to make them into a bird feeder or anything else – since I’ve not actually seen one in the flesh — so over to you guys! Any reuse suggestions or recycling ideas?

Any ideas what we can do with individual microwave pudding pots from the supermarket? They’re plastic.

First up, as always, reduce if you can – I know those puddings are convenient but it doesn’t take that much longer to make your own with a microwave (for example, a syrup pudding only takes about five minutes from scratch and there are plenty of “chocolate pudding in a mug” recipes out there). Or, if there is more than one of you puddinging and you *have* to buy one, getting a bigger single pudding instead of lots of little ones – the overall amount of packaging will be slightly less, and the bigger pot will be more reusable.

Bringing us neatly onto reuses: any suggestions? I suspect there will be considerable overlap with yoghurt pots – but the ones I’ve seen are a little more shapely than those so that may allow other reuses.

The little ones are fine as seedling starter pots (make holes in the bottom for drainage), or as little paint pots. They’d make dome-shaped jelly moulds for individual jellies – or for making your own microwave puddings! You could also cross the plant pot/dessert mould ideas over and make dirt puddings ;) Any other ideas?

As for actual recycling, does anyone know what number plastic they are? From a bit of Googling around, I think they’ll be number 5, polypropylene – but I’ll check next time I’m at the supermarket.

I have increasing numbers of empty Purina one cat food bags.

Because they are plastic foil they are not accepted by my local council for recycling. [I'm in uk]

Bag has a zip lock. Sturdy item. Not sure what to do with them. I would gladly donate them to somewhere if I knew a place that re-used them.
size: 23 cm width / 27 cm height. Folds flat. At present these add to landfill. {cringes}

Any ideas how to recycle / re-use? [I do not have a garden or balcony, so no independent outdoor space]

We’ve asked about plastic pet food bags before but it seemed to be slanted towards big dog food bags – the size that can be used as grow bags or sealed rubbish/garbage bags. So any ideas for these smaller ones?

The zip lock element is interesting – making them easily water resistant if not full-on waterproof. I was reading the other day about the importance of having copies of all important paperwork (personal identification, bank details, insurance stuff) grouped together in a sealed easy-to-grab folder in case of an emergency – but someone else on the forum pointed out that such a file would be an identity thief’s dream — putting it in something like a couple of Purina bags would make it a lot less obvious. That would only use up one or two though – so any other suggestions?

(I’ve contacted Purina to see if they have any recycling advice: if they reply, I’ll add the info here.)

The reason I’m mentioning it here is two-fold — firstly, I thought it was a useful exercise and I’d recommend it anyone wanting to reduce. Secondly, I categorised my teabags as “probably not compostable” so possibly destined for landfill, which caused a bit of discussion in the comments (we do actually compost our teabags but not without a little hesitation). As I mentioned over there, Alice in Blogland looked into the issue a few years ago and found that teabags often include synthetic material in the heat sealed bit – the paper bag and the leaves are but not everyone wants synthetic materials in their compost heap. Without the heat sealed bit (typically food grade polypropylene), the bags wouldn’t stay sealed during manufacture and use.

It’s four years since Alice’s research though and the corporate world has made many green(washing) steps forward since then – so I thought it might be useful to check the situation again. I contacted ten tea companies and asked them whether I could compost their tea bags. Here are the responses:

Tetley

Tetley got back to me very, very quickly – which makes me think they get asked this question quite a lot:

The material used to make the actual tea bag is a mixture of mainly cellulose fibres and a small amount of polypropylene fibres to give the heat seal. Under normal composting conditions the cellulose fibres will break down, as will the tea, leaving the very small polypropylene fibres which are normally so small they are not seen. It does however take a reasonable amount of time to do this and really needs to be placed into a ‘proper’, established compost heap.

If it has not broken down it may be because:

• It has not been left long enough
• It hasn’t spent enough time at the centre of the heap where the temperature is higher
• It has been put on the garden, not on a compost heap
• It hasn’t been mixed with enough vegetable or organic matter
• The worm population is not high enough

The packs themselves are not compostable. We are working with our packaging suppliers on an ongoing basis as they are currently unable to supply us with fully biodegradable packaging that we can use for our packs. Comments like yours actually help us keep the pressure on our suppliers to produce a solution.

Taylors/Yorkshire

Taylors, who make Yorkshire tea as well as their own “Taylors of Harrogate” brand, say:

I can confirm that our teabag paper is layered up in several layers. One side of the paper incorporates a very thin web of a meltable plastic (polypropylene). …

We advise our customers that they can compost our tea bags. Legislation says that provided an item is 95% degradable, then it is classed as
compostable. The amount of polypropylene in teabag paper is much less than this, so from a legal point of view teabag paper is compostable. Basically polypropylene is inert and does not react with or damage plants or animals. There is some argument that says that polypropylene
fibre can help soil bind together and aid water retention in soil, but the amounts of polyprop that you would compost via tea bags would really not register in a typical garden.

My colleagues who are keen gardeners report that, with a good, healthy compost heap, our tea bags compost in around a year or so. One suggestion that we often give is to use them in a pot on top of crocks and underneath the soil to aid drainage.

Whittards

Whittards say:

We are pleased to inform you that the teabags are compostable.

Twinings

Twinings say:

I can confirm that our Teabags are decomposable, however if you purchase our envelope teabags you will have to tear off the staple and string*. Also it has been made aware to us here at Twinings that our teabags compose better when they are split.

(I’m wondering if that means that the string is synthetic rather than cotton…)

Clipper

Clipper say:

… The Clipper products that contain square/standard tea bags use unbleached paper that is composed of plant and wood fibres and a low level of polypropylene …

Clipper products that contain ‘String & Tag’ tea bags, use tea bag paper as detailed above, but without any plastic/synthetic fibres. …

Clipper teabags are suitable for inclusion in compost heaps where the wood and plant fibres will break down. Any remaining fibres will be so small that they cannot be detected and will disperse in the soil.

Yogi

Yogi, who make a lot of herbal teas, say on their website that they use:

100% oxygen bleached paper bags, sewn with pure cotton strings and stapled with inert metal … then individually packed in heat-sealed envelopes

Tazo

Tazo also make different herbal teas and they say they use:

oxygen-whitened hemp cellulose [fastened with] food-grade aluminium staples

London Tea Company

The LTC say their “boxes and pouches” are “biodegradable” – I’m not sure if “pouches” means the bags or envelopes for individually wrapped bags though.

No response yet

• PG Tips – no response
• Typhoo – no response

Conclusions

All the “heat sealed” bags I looked into use polypropylene – which will usually break up (rather than break down) in a good compost heap. I think it comes down to the individual on whether they want those fibres in their resulting compost – a single bag might not have much in it but you know what us Brits are like, I think our compost heap is 50% tea bags (…only a slight exaggeration). Polypropylene is classed as “low to moderate hazard” by the Environmental Working Group in the US but there have been reports of polypropylene containers leaching chemicals which have “potent effects on enzymes and proteins“. Teabags would only add a low amount of that “low to moderate hazard” into a compost heap but still, some people may choose to avoid it.

There is a similar choice with stapled gusset bags – they don’t need the polypropylene but some people might want to remove the staple (I do a lot of …soil fondling with my hands and I’m not sure I’d like to come across lots of sharp staples in the soil).

Loose tea obviously side steps these issues – reducing the amount of resources used in the first place and the amount of waste that need dealing with after use (particularly compared to individually wrapped bags). You can get reusable metal infusers in different shapes and styles if you want a tea bag experience rather than using a pot/strainer.

Do you compost your tea bags? Have you had any problems composting them? Do you avoid them because of the resources/waste?

(Photos by E-Note and Bullit)

How can I reuse/recycle clorox wipes containers?

I hadn’t heard of Clorox wipes but my friend Google tells me they’re the same type of dispensing containers used for many types of wipes (baby wipes, screen cleaning wipes, etc). Like with all disposable wipes, the first thing I’d say is reduce your use of them if you can. Use a washable/reusable cloth instead – either a standard dishcloth or a specially designed cloth for use with just water, no additional chemicals needed.

But to answer the question in hand, chances are, you can recycle the container with your standard plastic recycling. I’m not 100% sure about Clorox ones but most of the ones I’ve come into contact with and checked have been made from polyethylene (PE) plastic, which is widely recyclable.

As for reuses, without any modification at all, they’re good string, twine or yarn dispensers in the garden or for crafts – the container protects the yarn from the elements/cat-attack and you just pull it out as you need it. You probably won’t need more than a couple of those though so any other ideas?

I found a box full of used glass spice jars at a car boot sale recently and had bought it before I knew it. They’re those narrow round ones with plastic lids. I’ve refilled some of the herbs and spices to make my kitchen look neater but still have a dozen or so. Any ideas?

My first suggest was going to be refilling them – but you’ve already done that ;) We buy spices in bulk bags and decant them into old jars/purpose-bought jars to make them easier to store/use. Extending that, perhaps you could also make up your own spice mixes too?

Away from their (almost) intended purpose, I’d imagine like many small containers, they’d be useful for craft storage – small beads, buttons, poppers and whatnot, even tapestry yarn/threads (fed through the holes in the lid). The clear glass would make it easy to find what you want and look pretty on a shelf too. (Actually, we’ve covered more boring shaker topped jars in the past and a lot of those suggestions are crafty and applicable here.)

How about taking the top off and using a few of them in a row as single stem vases? You’d have to be careful they didn’t topple over I guess – but they’d probably look cute (a bit like the test tube vase racks that were all over the place a few years ago).

Any other suggestions?

I have to travel a lot to work and in a day can easily get through a dozen single serving milk pots – on the train, at meetings, at hotels etc. I’m not interested in recycling them, I want to stop needing to use them! Any ideas?

Good question and it is much better to reduce rather than recycle so hopefully we’ll be able to help you with some ideas.

You could take some of milk from home with you in a little bottle – depending on the temperature, that might only be good for the outward journey — it might be like adding butter to your drinks later in the day! In the winter it’ll last longer though – and if your room is without mini-bar/fridge, don’t forget the old student/frugaleer tricks of leaving bottles of milk in a sink filled with cold water or out on a window sill.

If it ripens too quickly like that, dried milk powder or “non-dairy creamer” (Coffee mate etc) may be an alternative since they won’t go off – some milk powders need reconstituting first though so that might be a bit of a faff on the train.

It might be easiest to find a type of tea/coffee that you can enjoy without milk – for example, a lighter black tea (Earl Grey for example) if you’re not into fruit/herbal teas — then that would avoid the milk question altogether. Carrying your own tea bags around is pretty easy since they’re small and lightweight – and it would probably look less odd in a meeting if you whipped out a preferred teabag rather than milk powder and a whisk.

Any other suggestions for Leann?

I love drinking the various flavors of Keurig coffee, but hate wasting the cups since they can’t be recycled I need suggestions on what to do. Kids crafts would be great since I have 2 little ones.

I hadn’t heard of “K cups” or “Keurig coffee” before but Wikipedia tells me they’re a bit like a Nespresso machine – single use pods of coffee. As with the Nespresso ones, there are a few how-tos out there on refilling the cups to reuse them again.

As far as I can see (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), the bottom of the cup is pierced during the coffee making process so that might get in the way of some reuses. From pictures on Google (btw, don’t Google Image search “k cup” unless you like pictures of boobies), I think they’re about 4-5cm in diameter and about the same tall.

I’ve got a bit of a one track mind at the moment so can’t think of anything else other than using them for growing seedlings.

Anyone else got any better suggestions? Especially kid-craft ones as Rose requested?

They’re all empty, flattened out version of these:

John likes his coffee.

To be fair, he does prefer quality rather than quantity and these represents many many months of coffee consumption but still, it’s a lot of plastic.

Some details of the bags. They’ve got a zip lock closing at the top – but also a “breathing” pore so aren’t actually water or air tight. They’ve got a gusset bottom (as you can see from the second picture). They’re about 20cm/8ins square. They smell very strongly of coffee. They’re very, very red.

One idea I had was to make a shopping bag along the lines of this one (which uses cat food pouches). Or using the same patchwork principle to make a storage box for all John’s coffee paraphernalia.

(I’m also going to contact the coffee company to see if they have any recycling advice.)

Any other suggestions for reusing or upcycling them?

We’ll talk about more specifically cleaning alternatives later in the week but bleach, and so bleach bottles, is a candidate for reduction. There are alternatives to such harmful stuff in plastic bottles. But some people are a bit “prise it from my cold dead hands” about bleach and will never be parted from it, no matter what us vinegar loving hippies say.

All the ones I’ve checked have been made from HDPE – type 2 plastic – and most areas that collect plastic collect resin code 2 plastics so they can be recycled but I think reuses might be harder to identify. They feel less reusable than, say water bottles or pop bottles – because of the chemical residue, because they’re thick opaque plastic and in the case of some of them, a quirky bent neck for getting under toilet rims.

Anyone got any reusing/upcycling ideas though? Do you do anything with yours or do you just throw them into your recycling bin?

We had to buy a couple of those annoying plastic lemons to tide us over until we can get to another shop to buy it in a lovely, recyclable glass bottle.

Admittedly we could squeeze it fresh – we generally need it in small quantities (a tsp or so at a time) – but we could freeze it (in half ice cube amounts, then once frozen, crack them out of the cubes into a baggie to save space) — but after last week’s marmalade & lemon curd making, I’m not sure how much more citrus fruit squeezing my poor hands can take ;) (I will do it though if this lemon juice in plastic lemons situation continues.)

According to the plastic lemon, it can be recycled – but doesn’t give a resin code number so I don’t know what type of plastic it is.

So any reusing or recycling ideas?

(Photo by Paul Hurst under the CCA-SA licence)

Those who know that Strepsils are a vaguely medicinal lozenge for sore throats will probably be able to see that the inspiration for this post came from my sick bed.

For years, they’ve been sold in blister packs but now you can get them in plastic “handy tubes” too. I would imagine that the tubes use more packaging per tablet than the blister packs but they seem considerably easier to reuse, and reuse often, than blister packs.

The tubes are sturdy plastic, just less than 2cm/an inch in diameter and about 10cm/5ins long. The lid pops off but re-seals securely – the new camera film canister, perhaps?

The tube I’ve got smells strongly of “honey & lemon” so I’m not sure I’d want to use it for food items in the first instance but it would be perfect in a sewing kit – somewhere to keep needles, buttons or other small fastenings, or even a whole emergency kit for carrying in a handbag. As the top’s seal feels at least water-tight, it would probably be great for taking small quantities of shampoo or conditioner (etc) when travelling.

Any other suggestions?

• I love, love, love using the metal of drinks cans for things – and this is a wonderful reuse – a very special Christmas card. (Keep the prettiest cards from this year to make them next year!)
• Eaten your fill of shop-bought mince pies already? Use the pie tins to make a table centre piece for your Christmas meal!
• Still got to wrap your offerings? Here’s a cute wrapping idea: make a shiny bow from a sweet wrapper or crisp packet.
• These super simple tree decorations made from scrap card are great – from cutting out to on the tree in less than five minutes!
• A little more involved, these sheet music tree decorations would be very fun for musical families.
• And even more personal decoration idea: use old flour to make salt dough and make animal/children paw print tree ornaments to mark the year. I love the idea that making these could be incorporated into a family Christmas tradition – each year make more to add to the collection.

For all those celebrating Christmas, have a very merry one!

For all those not celebrating Christmas tomorrow, have a fab weekend!

Hopefully you’ve already been busy upcycling random stuff into Christmas presents and recycled Christmas decorations – it’s easy to keep the green theme going after Christmas too.

Give away unwanted gifts & replaced items

Don’t wait until you spring clean – declutter now while all the new additions are fresh in your mind.

Give away items that you don’t want or won’t use, or old items that have been replaced by something shiny and new – the sooner you give it away, the sooner someone else will get some use out of it, and it might stop them having to buy new-new in the January sales.

Reuse wrapping paper

Don’t throw away wrapping paper – reuse it instead. The bigger pieces can be flattened out and used again (kids especially won’t notice the same paper being used year on year), or made into reusable paper gift bags.

Smaller pieces can be used to make gift tags, festive envelopes or used to revamp Christmas decorations for use next year.

Particularly creased pieces can be shredded to provide protective cushioning for gifts throughout the year – or to protect delicate Christmas decorations while in storage, which brings me neatly onto…

Be kind to your Christmas decorations

Store them away carefully and you’ll be able to use them year on year – meaning less waste going to landfill and reducing your need to buy new stuff.

As well as shredded wrapping paper, you can use packaging (such as moulded expanded polystyrene foam and formed plastic) from new toys or gadgets to protect delicate items. Wrap tinsel and strings of Christmas lights around a kitchen roll tube or a plastic bottle to avoid tangling. Label boxes so you can find them again easily.

If you don’t have any space for storage, don’t throw away decorations – pack them away neatly and offer them on Freecycle/Freegle.

Reuse or recycle your Christmas cards

Similarly, keep your favourite Christmas cards to one side – possibly tucked into a decorations box – to recycle into gift tags or recycled decorations next year. Cut others into narrow strips to use as shopping lists – the card is easier to write on than paper when you’re on the go. Keep large cards for crafts – for when you need thin but strong card. There are lots of different ways to reuse them.

If you can’t see yourself reusing them, plenty of high street shops have recycling collection bins especially for cards – typically WH Smith, Tesco and M&S – often with a donation going from the store to a related charity (such as the Woodland Trust) for every bin of cards collected. Some charity shops also collect cards for reusing/upcycling into gift tags and the like – ask around to see who is collecting them in your area.

Use up every single bit of your turkey – and other food

A lot of energy went into growing the bird, transporting it around and cooking it – so make the most of it by using up all the leftover meat and making stock from the carcass.

Use leftover veg to make soup, stews and stock.

Use leftover Christmas cake to make fruity rum truffles – or throw it outside for wild birds to eat.

If don’t think you’re going to get through all your Christmas biscuits or mince pies, be proactive about it before they go stale – freeze some for later consumption (keep the festival spirit going all January!) or give them away to someone else – they might be very grateful for free treats!

What are your favourite ways to reduce waste at Christmas?

(Photos by soultga, Tombre and Vanessa Fitzgerald)

What can be done with Smint boxes? Anything?

Smint packets are sealed plastic dispensers, which according to the Smint website can’t be opened and refilled to “assure the maximum hygiene for our product”. That makes them infinitely less easy to reuse as, say, Tic Tac boxes, which can be opened and refilled easily.

Does anyone know if there is a way to open & refill Smint boxes? If you can get into them, like Tic Tac boxes, they’d be useful for storing and dispensing all sorts of small items like beads, seeds or air rifle pellets. If you can’t get into them though, I’m stuck for reuses. Anyone else got any ideas?

The best thing would probably be to avoid them in the first place – the all important “reduce”. There are lots of mints available in paper packaging – a much lower footprint.

Any other thoughts?

There are lots of ways to make them reusing waste paper, scrap fabric, or random other things from around the home and garden – and they’re certainly not all just for kids.

Here are some of our favourites:

• Want to have a starry, starry night? Use twigs from the garden to make window or tree decorations. (Or if your garden is as cold & icy as ours, any other sticks will suffice – perhaps the project to use up your hoarded collection of “disposable” chopstics or lolly pop sticks?)
• If you fancy something a little shinier, make stars from old foil cake or pie tins instead.
• Or if you prefer your stars in a classy matte, how about making these Christmas fairy light shades from old brown/manila envelopes?
• Brown paper shopping bags – particularly ones with a Christmas themed print on them – can be made into decorative Christmas stockings.
• Or if you’d prefer to have fabric stockings to stuff full of treats, how about recycling a pair of old jeans for a modern look?
• Smaller scraps of old clothes or fabric can be upcycled into scrap fabric wreaths – these ones made from scraps of old felted wool clothes are just lovely.
• If you’re more of a paper person, this origami Christmas wreath could be made with coloured waste paper – envelopes from Christmas cards for example.

• Or if buttons are more your thing (mmm, buttons), you could make this fab wreath instead – if you loosely sewed the buttons onto the card, you could snip them off to reuse as buttons as you needed them for actual buttoning purposes!
• If all these are a bit too grown up for you – or you’d like a project to keep the kids busy while you’re assisting Santa, how about using wine corks to make reindeer tree decorations?
• Or if you’ve still got last year’s Christmas cards, they could use them to make a cute bunting banner.
• Finally, a couple of our favourite ideas for revamping existing decorations that are getting old or tired: I love the look of these fabric wrapped Christmas items (I’ve done a similar thing before with a single colour frogged yarn – very pleasant).
• Or, turn plain baubles into fun (angry!) characters with a little paint.

Unlike its foam ‘peanuts’ counterpart which can be reused as multi-purpose packaging again and again, the moulded stuff only really fits around the item you got it with — but there are still some fantastic ways to reuse it.

1. Crocks in plant pots

Chunks of expanded polystyrene foam make great crocks for plant pots – particularly large tubs filled with shallow rooted plants. The light foam fills the space rather than heavy soil, making it easier to move around and it helps with drainage too.

Those worried about plastic chemical leaching may want to avoid using it when growing fruit or veg in containers though.

2. Use it to make artwork or to mount pictures on walls

Waste expanded polystyrene can be used to make fun artwork – it can be used as a core for sculptures or models.

Flatter sections can be used like poster board/foam core to mount pictures, photos or posters on walls – the resulting picture is rigid (so won’t curl) but light.

Deeper pieces of the foam can be used to make blocky canvas-style wall art – mount your picture so that it run around the edges, covering the foam sides. If you haven’t got a single piece of polystyrene that’s big enough, make a strong frame from lengths of it instead.

3. Floating bath pillow or bath toys for kids

Pick a reasonably smooth piece of expanded polystyrene and cover it with a quick drying fabric – thin cotton or an old swim suit perhaps – to use it as a floating pillow in the bath.

Or cover smaller, interesting shapes with fun fabric to make floating toys for kids.

4. Use it to make costumes

As it’s light, bulky and reasonably easy to modify, it’s perfect for turning into Halloween or fancy dress costumes where you want to be bulkier – or more robotic/mechanical – than you currently are.

5. Use it for insulation

The air trapped between the individual polystyrene beads makes it an excellent insulator. Some people are worried about using it around the house in case of fires but it can be used in other ways:

• Coldframe – moulded expanded polystyrene boxes are great as cold frames in the garden as they protect delicate seedlings from the cold earth. They’re commonly used for shipping refrigerated vegetables or chilled/frozen fish so ask at your local market to see if they have any spares. Then you just need an old window or some scrap clear plastic sheeting for the top.
• Ponds – if you’re installing a pond, consider placing a layer of expanded polystyrene around the liner and the earth. It’ll stop the cold earth leaching away the water’s last bits of warmth in the winter. You can also float the foam on top of the water in winter to stop it freezing solid – and in the summer, frogs can use polystyrene floats as mock lily pads.
• “Hay” oven – a hay oven allows you to save energy while slow cooking stews & casseroles. You start the casserole on the stove then cover it and put it into a well insulated box for several hours – the retained heat keeps it hot and cooking. As the name suggests, hay is a common insulator – but expanded polystyrene can perform a similar job.

Since they’re well sealing metal tins, they’re great for using for stuff that needs to be kept dry – a sewing kit, next year’s seeds stash, spices, flour, first aid kits/emergency kits, spare nuts & bolts in the garage… What do you store in them?

But do you use them for anything more exciting? Like Judith, have you use them to make anything fun?

It always surprises me that these days many bicycles are supplied without mudguards. Anyhow, I’ve discovered for my children’s bicycles, that a very satisfactory set of mudguards can be made from a couple of 4 pint milk cartons, 5 x 15cm tie wraps and 8 staples.

A photograph of this arrangement can be seen here:

and I’m sure that you they could be decorated in some way.

I’d be delighted if you were to share this inventive reuse of the milk carton with your viewers and it might save many a grateful mother from having to wash the muddy stripes of the backs of shirts and trousers.

Great reuse idea! I bet if they were painted a solid colour, it would be hard to tell what they’re made from.

Anyone else done anything similar?