Collection/recycling programs have been part of charity fundraising for a long time, but recently most seem to have moved from collecting large amounts of low value items (such as stamps or milk bottle tops) to collecting more valuable items (such as broken jewellery, mobile phones or toner cartridges). There is a lot of competition now for those type of items – not only between the charities but because it’s so easy for people to sell them online themselves – but it’s still a good income stream for certain charities.

So how can smaller charities set up their own recycling schemes?

First, you need to identify an item or items to collect. While lots of charities do well selling random items – whatever is donated to them – through shops, jumble sales or eBay, if you want to run a dedicated recycling scheme for waste materials, it’s better to focus your time and attention on no more than a couple of items to start with.

When picking the item/s, you need to think about a few things:

• where will the item come from (individuals? workplace/organisation collections? businesses?)
• who else is collecting the item (ie, who will be your competition?)
• who will buy the item from you (ie, how will you turn the collected items into money? You might just be able to use existing consumer-facing service, for example, selling collected phones through one of the many phone recycling websites. Other items might involve liaison with usual business-to-business waste management companies. There is no point collecting something that you can not sell on in one way or another.)
• how much will they pay you for each item/set of items (and is that amount worth it for the amount of time/effort you had to put into collecting it)
• could your group add value to the collected items using their skills or resources (eg, upcycling old textiles into new items or pre-sorting bulk matter).

The specific logistics of the scheme will be determined by the item chosen – and in a circular way, also need to be considered when choosing the item in the first place.

• how will it be collected (at a shop/specific location? through drop bins? through the post? via individual collection? will these collection methods have any associated costs?)
• where will the items be stored before they’re sold on (if going to be collecting a large volume of small value items, then you’ll need a lot of space; if you’re going for a higher value items, it needs to be more secure)
• if the collection/storage will have additional safety or insurance implications that will cost your charity money (public liability insurance, employers’ liability insurance, premises insurance…)
• how the item will be delivered to the buyer (some b2b companies might collect but others might require you to deliver or pay for postage)
• who will manage the collection, storage and delivery of the items.

Once you’ve thought about all the above and decided to collect a particular item or items, you need to think about how you’re going to promote the scheme. Some of the questions above might lead to obvious promotion ideas, eg, well signposted drop bins are a promotion as well as a collection spot, you just have to get those bins somewhere public. If you’re collecting something niche, or something that isn’t often collected post-consumer, definitely put something on the web about it – and email me so I can do a post about it on here ;)

Have you set up a recycling scheme for a charity? Do you have any advice to pass on? Is there anything else that needs to be considered? Got any suggestions for items that charities should collect? Or should avoid collecting? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

My council (Suffolk) say they’ll only recycle glass bottles not other glass like windows. I’ve got an old glass coffee table to get rid of, what can I do with it?

That’s a pretty standard glass recycling policy – only bottles and jars, not plate glass (like windows or photo frames) or cooking glass items (pyrex or other dishes) – so it’s probably better to look for reuse rather than recycling ideas.

Firstly, as with all furniture, try to pass it on to someone else who might still use it — even if you think it’s rather old fashioned or outdated, someone might appreciate having any table at all or love having it if they’re going for a retro thing ;) If it’s a nice piece that’s damaged, someone else might be willing to repair it. Offer it on Freecycle/Freegle, or to a furniture-accepting charity shop (not all charity shops have the space to accept furniture but some specialise in it).

If it’s not suitable for passing along, the glass might be reusable (either by yourself or someone else via Freecycle/Freegle) for a project around the home or garden – on top of another table/desk as a surface protector, to make a cold frame/as part of a greenhouse (although be careful about cutting out too much light if it’s smoked or frosted) or maybe mounted on the wall as a dry erase board?

Any other ideas?

We’ve had loads of great suggestions about them over the years but here are some of my favourites:

1. Pencil sorter
Mentioned as a featured link a few weeks ago, I love how neat and practical these containers are for coloured pencils/pens. Stored on a shelf, the lids could be painted the colour of the pencils to make for easy identification.

2. Paint caddy
One close to my heart at the moment because we’re decorating – plastic milk jugs make great paint caddies. 4 pint/half-gallon/2ltr bottles are best for this – cut out the panel of plastic opposite the handle, leave the neck intact for strength and cut down to about half way. The handle is easy to hold (or you could loop some wire/string around it to hang it from a ladder rung) and the caddy holds about 2 pints/1ltr of paint at a time – enough to do a fair amount of painting.

3. Foraging container
SandyM’s family use gallon milk bottles as foraging containers – widen the neck and add a loop of rope or a strong belt through the handle holds it up, leaving both hands free for collecting fruit. In the UK, our bottles tend to be long & thin, so possibly the wrong shape for this – but a great idea if you can get hold of those bigger square bottles.

4. Bird feeder
One of the original ideas for reusing them – make them into bird feeders. The how-to uses gallon jugs but the same theory can be applied to smaller ones too – I’ve made mini ones for our mini-tree from 1ltr/2pint bottles.

(I’ve also used a plastic milk bottle as a grit hopper for our chickens – same principle as the bird feeder but with stones/shells instead of food. It would be a cruel joke if they didn’t need the grit for digestion.)

5. Scoops
Cut away a wedge from the bottom to make it into a scoop – for scooping flour/grain/animal feed or other dry goods, or at the other end, as a pet poop scoop. Leave the lid on to avoid spills from the other end.

What are your favourite reuses for plastic milk bottles?

• How can I reuse or recycle plastic milk bottles?
• How can I reduce my use of plastic milk bottles?
• How can I reuse or recycle milk bottle tops?

I know about making breadcrumbs with stale bread but is there anything that can be done with bread that’s gone a bit mouldy? I don’t mean eat it of course but compost it?

Obviously the best thing to do is avoid it going mouldy in the first place – freeze it if you don’t have time to use it up or turn it into breadcrumbs there and then. But sometimes loaves have a tendency to turn in a blink of an eye so it’s harder to avoid.

Bread is one of those things that some people compost and others don’t. It will break down quite quickly but in an open, slow going compost heap, it might attract vermin to the pile even quicker. It’s also not going to add that much goodness to the heap either so you might decide it’s not worth the risk. But then what do you do with it instead?

Any suggestions? Do you compost bread?

(Photo of non-moldy bread because looking for a photo of moldy bread was making me too queasy!)

The first stage of the recycling triangle is Reduce – reduce the amount of things you buy/use and buy items that’ll last and can be repaired rather than ones that need replacing frequently — but how can you tell what will last?

What cues tell you when something is worth the extra money? And when it definitely isn’t?

Do you have a particular area of expertise? If so, tell us all about it on The Really Good Life!

Hi, I have an old leather zipped wallet type purse which is old, worn and quite grubby. I would rather recycle it somehow than put it in the bin but am not sure how to do this. Do you have any ideas?

First, it obviously depends on the state of the item but it might benefit from a makeover. Trying cleaning and polishing the leather, or if it’s suede (as Joanne suggested in her email’s subject line), you can get suede cleaning tools for just a couple of £/$s — they’re obviously good for maintaining all sorts of suede items, they don’t make them spotless but they can improve them a lot. Any other ideas for makeover/upcycling suggestions?

If it’s too far gone for that, the leather might be reclaimable for craft projects – including ones that’ll benefit from a “distressed” look to the leather. The suggestions given on our post about recycling leather/suede from an old sofa might need more leather than a small purse would provide but there still might be enough to make small things with — a larger handbag might have enough good quality leather to make a smaller coin purse. Or it could be used to make small art artefacts – like these cool leather scrap mushrooms.

Any other suggestions?

(I’ve used a stock photo, not Joanne’s actual purse so don’t feel restricted based on the photo – just think old leather purses/bags in general.)

After our discussion about making one earlier in the year, I have a trug-ish basket for gentle, slow foraging but I like the idea of a dedicated small fruit/berry harvesting bag – something that either hangs from my shoulder (possibly across my body for extra stability) to leave both hands free for collecting.

I could just use a long handled shopping bag but after seeing a post about purpose-bought harvesting bags at The Cottage Smallholder, I wondered about making one with a bit more structure than my floppy shoppers – I imagine it would protect the berries/fruit from accidentally squishing and hold the bag open so it’s easy to drop fruit in it with both hands full. (The more structured bag could be used as a general shopping bag too during the rest of the year so it’s not just a one-off use.)

So any suggestions/ideas/thoughts on how to make one?

The shape of the Cottage Smallholder’s one reminds me of a small pop-up laundry basket – a reuse for a (clean) old one of those maybe?

After posting my The Really Good Life post about fishing for fruit with a child’s fishing net, I read about someone making a similar net with an old wire coathanger and the gusset of some old tights — I wonder if another gusset could be used to make a basket – the fabric would be light, quick-drying and smooth on the fruit.

Another idea might be to crochet it – crocheting “net” shopping bags is easy-peasy but I’d have to make sure the holes didn’t stretch so much that the fruit would escape. I’d also have to add the structure to it – any suggestions for doing that? An old record might make a fun base plate but what about something to hold it open at the top?

I have a growing collection of wine bags – mostly paper – that are too nice to toss.

How can I recycle them – get them to people who might reuse them?

Most people I know reuse wine bags (and all gift bags) as many times as they can while they’re still in good enough condition to pass on. There is a bit of a tradition in my family to leave gift tags bare or written using a soft pencil to facilitate multiple uses.

If you’d rather not re-uses them yourself and have a number to give away, offer them on your local Freecycle/Freegle list. Scrap stores would probably welcome them with open arms too, as would organisers of local charity events like tombola or raffles, to make the prizes fancier/more mysterious.

Any other suggestions on where to pass them on? And what about reuses for the tall thin gift bags like these?

I thought it would be worth asking about squash (above) and marrow/courgette/zucchini (below) leaves because our garden is full of them and some of them are massive – when they stop finally fruiting, that’s going to be a LOT of vegetable matter going in the compost bin. Obviously not the end of the world – they’ll make nice compost for next year and it’ll nicely balance out our browns in there – but still.

From what I’ve read, chickens aren’t so keen to eat them so they’re probably not good for them. What about other livestock? If it’s veggie livestock, the leaves will end up in the compost anyway, just serving another purpose first ;)

My next question was going to be “can we eat them?” but a bit of Googling has already answered that for me – yes, we can eat squash leaves but best stick to the tender new leaves & shoots of summer squash, else they’re a bit tough. They also need peeling too apparently. Anyone had any experience of cooking with them?

Any other reuses for them?

How do you test for the set point? The most common method seems to be the “when it wrinkles on a cold plate” test but anyone use any other methods?

What do you do if it’s too runny once in jars? Or too solid?

And, not quite in the question but related, do you use/reuse anything interesting instead of commercial-bought pectin?

And any tips for reusing old jars? Reusable alternatives for waxed discs?

Finally, what do you do with jam that can’t be saved – stuff that burnt in the pan for example?

(“Why is this on Recycle This?” I hear you ask because it is a little tenuous as a “repair”. Well, one, because with the giant piles of fruit in our kitchen at the moment, I’ve got jam on my mind. And two, because jam failures may lead to food waste – and if we can save some rescueable jam from going in the bin, that’s a good thing.)

Daniel emailed us pictures of cannon he made reusing and recycling stuff. Yes, you read that right, a CANNON. (Ok, ok, a decorative rather than functioning cannon but still).

I applied for a job working on the gun side of BAe, I did not get a reply and took it upon my self to make my own as a personal token of disgust with them out of rubbish.

The barrel is made from a plastic spoil down pipe, which is resting on a tables extending brace that is found underneath, with the tow bar that was picked up off the road while walking the dog. The handles at the base of the barrel is a bit of broom handle, and the end cap is a plastic part of a polishing buff for cars. The brass hub cap is the back plate off a door handle, and the fire hole device is a letter of a car name badge, with the brass design in the middle coming from a handle back plate off an old video cabinet, the axle is a cut off from a scaffold pipe. It’s painted with black and copper paint from the shed.

Good job Sellafield replied!. (Didn’t get it.)

He also made a decorative well with a weather vane attachment for his garden:

The roof is made from slate taken from where a velux window was installed. The two support beams were from a shed, the rope was washed up on the beach, the rope is wrapped around the other half of the cannon barrel pictured earlier, the winding mechanism on the right side is part of the table extender mentioned earlier, the winding handle is a pedal and cog that has been adapted. The base is the wooden base of a fish tank that has a plastic liner and two fish-(not recycled).

The eagle is weather vane that always faces the wind and keeps seagulls out of my garden. This is made from a broken wheely bin with the wing tips heated to curl up, the legs are made from the same brush handle as the cannon and is set in attack mode with talons made from half a clothes peg. The eagle is painted in the eagle colours using shed stains, and the north, west, east and south is off a xmas and noel decorations… Full time score=EAGLE 1:0 SEAGULLS.

Great reusing & recycling Daniel – fantastic to see so many things being reused so creatively!

Patty got in touch to tell us about her reuses. She reused some old placemats to make crumb catchers/bibs for messy eaters on the go:

It catches all the droppings from sloppy eaters! The bottom edge snaps up to catch the crumbs. A ribbon is around the neck and attaches to a small button. It can also be unsnapped, rolled up and buttoned to keep it snug and then just rubber band it to the visor to be used in the car.

She also told us about using old egg boxes (particularly plastic ones) in her jewellery drawer:

I have used my cartons in my jewelry drawer. My rings and ear rings fit where the eggs go and necklaces and bracelets go around the opened top side where the separators stick up. That keeps them from tangling. If you have a deep drawer, they stack beautifully!

As someone who is constantly detangling bracelets & necklaces, thanks for the great suggestion Patty!

Hi, I wonder if the Recycle This community can help. My husband and I have finally moved into a house with outdoor space and want to seize the opportunity to begin composting. However, our yard is completely concreted over so a normal compost bin won’t work. I’ve done a bit of research and think a wormery might be the ticket but they are so expensive! I just want to make a haven for the little wriggly guys we buy, so does anyone have any neat ideas about how to build a wormery and what to use? (obviously reusing general household junk where possible). Thanks so much you guys, absolutely love the site, you are awesome!

(She’s right – you guys in the Recycle This community are awesome!)

Normal compost bins would work on concrete – we just had a piece of wood underneath our open-bottomed one at our old house to facilitate air circulation and moving it around (although we have yet to move it to our new house – that’s going to be quite a effort!) – but wormeries are great too, working a bit quicker so don’t need to be as big – plus who doesn’t want 1000 new wriggly pets? ;)

I’m tempted to build a wormery too for dealing with dog & cat poo (the output can’t be used on veg, which limits our use of it here but better than it going to landfill) so any suggestions?

A lot of the commercial ones I’ve seen have been tray-based to allow easy rotation/access to the new vermicompost. The trays have mesh bottoms to allow the worms to move constantly upwards in search of food – when they reach the top, whip the bottom tray out to the top and start filling that one instead. The trays should fit together snugly – the bottoms touching if it wasn’t for the waste matter – rather than stacked to allow the worms to travel about. They also tend to have a drip tray at the bottom for collecting liquid run-off (which is a great fertiliser).

There are also ones more like purpose bought compost heaps – with an access hatch at the bottom. Possibly easier to make but apparently harder to keep healthy when you’re new to wormerying.

Also any suggestions for where to get the worms? Any types of worms to look out for/avoid?

The discovery happened because a friend of ours has 300+ old New Scientist magazines that he no longer wants and would like a green option for disposing of them.

A few years ago, many paper recycling bins couldn’t accept glossy paper – they were either office paper or newspaper only – but that’s changed now and magazines can be recycled in most paper bins so as a minimum, our friend could do that. He could also try giving them away on his local Freecycle/Freegle group – the magazines will be out of date from a news point of view but someone still might want to read the not so time critical articles.

For smaller quantities of magazines, there are a lot of examples of people re-using magazines for crafts – often using rolled up pages to make photo frames or ornamental bowls.

Any other suggestions?

• I’m a big fan of reusing milk bottles for all sorts of things and this idea for using them as stationery organisers is fantastic. If they were for use by little delicate hands, I’d be tempted to sticky-tape the cut edges to make them less sharp.
• Kristin from Craft Leftovers used the offcuts from fitting a bamboo blind to make coordinating twined coasters.
• Jan McNeil, a Sculpture & Photography student from the University of Ulster, emailed to ask if anyone has any old baby dummies/pacifiers lying around – she wants them for an art project. Get in touch if you’ve got some – or have any ideas for where she might be able to get them from – and I’ll pass your details/suggestions along.
• I love the idea of this toothbrush holder made out of old toothpaste tubes. (Although I’d want to make sure it was easy to clean – which, with the lips, I’m not sure it would be in this design).
• This reusable lunch bag how-to uses new shower curtains but it could equally be made from a clean old one. A great way to reuse to reduce.
• Someone – a name didn’t make it through so I don’t know who – sent over some photos of a birthday table cloth made from old balloons: “I recycle my birthday ballons by gluing them to a clear plastic sheet, gotten in the fabric dept. They make a cute table cover for the party!”

I just know they’ve got pieces missing so would feel bad about giving them to a charity shop. They’re cardboard with a shiny paper top so they could be recycled?

Probably – as long as it’s just paper and not plastic laminate. Most (but not all) paper recycling bins take light card & glossy paper but best to check the advice in your area.

Since it’s getting to the dog days of the summer holidays and they’ll be bored, perhaps use child labour to do the jigsaws and check for missing pieces, then you’ll know what’s missing. If it’s not an important piece, you could mark on the box what is missing and some charity shops/thrift shops still might take them.

Other than that, I’ve seen old puzzle pieces used as decorations in a number of craft projects – photo frames & on ornaments and to make Christmas decorations (wreaths & baubles).

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by pzado)

How can rubber stamps be recycled? I found a box full in the stationery cupboard from two department name changes ago!

Given the department name comment, I imagine these are custom ones, not generic “approved” or date stamps – I’d put the latter on eBay or Freecycle/Freegle because they’re still very useful in their own right. The former ones will be less reusable but I’d have loved to play with them when I was a kid (my childhood roleplaying was surprisingly bureaucratic; when I used to play ‘school’, I spent the whole time working out class lists & timetables for said classes) (really).

Depending on the construction of the stamps, you (or someone else) might be able to take them apart and reuse them to make new stamps – replacing the stamp itself but reusing the handles or the mechanism if it’s a self-inking one. Again, eBay/Freecycle/Freegle if you don’t want to give it a go yourself. If they’re very nice old ones, a local stampmaker also might want them to reuse as antique stamps.

If you actually wanted to recycle them, you’d have to break them up into their component parts too – all the ones I’ve seen have been mixed materials so they’d have to be split apart and recycled individually.

Any other suggestions?

The recipe needs the oven to be hot (230C/450F/Gas mark 8) and in addition to the 40-50 minute cooking time, it needs to be well pre-heated (the cast iron casserole dish needs to be sizzling or the bread will stick) – so a lot of heat for a long time. We don’t generally eat enough bread to warrant making multiple loaves at once so I try to use the other space for other things. I’ve made scones/biscuits a few times and we nearly always have egg shells that need baking before crushing & returning to the chickens as grit.

Any other suggestions for things I could cook/bake alongside the bread? It’s not a huge oven and the casserole for the bread takes up quite a bit of space but there is a spare rack for things no more than 6cm/3″ high, a narrow strip next to the casserole, and the oven floor too.

(We usually bake mid-morning so we have cooled fresh bread for sandwiches at lunchtime. Since I’m usually working then, I don’t have a lot of time to make things from scratch and also it’s not a suitable time to make things that need to be eaten immediately after cooking. The oven is too hot for slow-cooking anything for lunch/dinner. Any suggestions would be welcome but suggestions taking these points into account would be especially great!)

It’s advised not to compost walnuts/walnut shells because the trees contain a chemical called juglone, which is toxic to some trees, plants and vegetables (especially members of the Solanaceae family – aubergine, tomatoes & potatoes) so better safe and than sorry when it comes to composting them.

Walnut shells have a number of industrial uses – a thickener in the paints & plastics industries, as a filler in explosives, and for cleaning/polishing – but less re-uses in the domestic setting. I’ve used exfoliating soaps and cleansers with tiny walnut shell particles as the abrasive element so home soap makers could use them up – but what about other reuses?

Due to a combination of a underestimation of seed germination rates, disorganisation/ignoring plans and demon slugs, my growing hasn’t gone quite as I thought it might but we’re doing ok and I’ve learned a lot about growing here.

One thing definitely on my list for next year – well, technically later this year – is to give my beds a good old fashioned manure boost in late autumn. The soil here is very poor but since I reclaimed the beds from the weeds in early spring, I couldn’t do a manure feed this year and I think our output has suffered as a result. I’ve been feeding the seedlings/growing plants since then but I think better soil to start with would have helped overall. Ah well, live and learn.

Anyway, homemade plant/vegetable fertilisers. I’m sure everyone reading this has a bulging compost heap for general compost goodness (if not, start one today!) but I thought it might be interesting to hear what kitchen scraps/plants/garden waste/household waste people use for specific fertilising/feeding plants at this time of year.

I’ve been making/using a lot of liquid fertiliser from nettles this year because we have so many in the field next door to our house. Coffee grinds are also popular as a mid-season fertiliser, as are potash and bonemeal.

What are your favourite produced-at-home fertilizers? Do you have any tips for particular plants?

I am trying to find a way to recycle these display Perspex props. We used them in lots of our London stores and have loads of them. Sadly they are mostly all damaged so I don’t think anybody else would want them.

I really don’t want to throw them away and am trying to find out what to do with them.

It is possible to recycle perspex (aka plexiglas, lucite or acrylic glass) but it’s not widely done post-consumer — I can only find details of a scheme which aimed at collecting offcuts & waste from perspex manufacturers. (In case anyone is interested, it was the Amari Recycling Initiative – does anyone know any post-consumer collection?)

Even damaged, the raw material might be usable by makers/crafters. Local art schools (or just the the art/design&tech depts of normal schools), hacker/maker groups (such as hackspaces) or scrapstores would probably all welcome the donation – and depending on the area/amount, might even be able to do a collection. Or someone on Freecycle/Freegle might want them too.

Any other suggestions for recycling/reusing them en masse? Or individual projects for small pieces of perspex?

I would like to use steel and aluminium cans to make jewelery. Do you know how to cut the metal out? Should the can be crushed first? Do you know how to smooth the edges so they don’t cut? If you could throw any light on this or point me to a website as I am not getting much coming up in google at the moment? Thanks.

I’ve made numerous things out of drinks cans (all aluminium I think) over the years and have mostly just used scissors for the cutting – it’s not as hard to cut as you’d think. I might use a can opener to remove the lid or a knife to start a hole in the body but then scissors suffice. I typically cut down the print “seam” and around the top & bottom to remove the curve so am left with a flat rectangle of metal.

(I’ve tried using shaped hole punches on cans but only lightweight ones so not had much success. Alison Bailey Smith has talked about the heavy duty ones she uses on plastic – I wonder if they’d be good on metal.)

And if the edges are smooth, not jagged, they’re also not as sharp as you might think. I’m not saying I’d necessarily want to wear them as jewellery in their nude state but in all my making, I’ve not once cut myself. Anyone got any tips for making the edges safer though?

Finally, anyone made any interesting jewellery from cans – or seen any inspiring examples of work around the wonderful worldwide web?

All the babies are starting to crawl/walk with support now so need penning in lest they get *everywhere*. At their own homes, they’ve have purpose-bought playpens but when they visit here, their parents have to hold them/leave them in their prams for the duration of the visit. I bought a handmade quilted playmat for when they were smaller and couldn’t escape so easily but mobilebaby has put an end to that. What with our dog, cats & chickens, giant cactus plants, knitting needles & other sharp/swallowable craft supplies, endless electric cables and bajillion stairs (house over four storeys, garden over another four) … well, with all that, sometimes I think *we* need to be penned in for *our* safety.

So, anyway, I’d like to make a playpen type thing – and I’d rather not buy a whole lot of expensive supplies to make it. However I do realise there are safety concerns – especially with hinged bits (it will need to be collapsible so it can be packed away when the babies go home to stop the dogs/cats/chickens getting in it).

There are surprisingly few how-tos online (or at least very few that I can find), which is odd considering how long babies existed before the invention of mass-produced nursery furniture. There seem to be two basic designs these days – wooden bars (or metal/plastic ones like in the picture) or plastic mesh sides. I presume the babies will be very keen to see out so reusing/upcycling some regular fabric – for example, old bedding – for the sides would cause upset.

Any thoughts/ideas?

Can big paper wall planners be recycled? We’ve got at least a dozen at my school to get rid of now but I didn’t know about recycling them in the paper bins because they’re laminated.

No, it’s very unlikely that they’ll be accepted for paper recycling. Most wipe-clean plastic-coated paper – whether it’s actually laminated or just a thin coating on one side – is also more hassle than its worth when it comes to recycling.

There might be ways to reuse them though – we covered reuses for laminated posters last year and there is probably a big overlap for reuses (especially as a lot of those ideas are school-friendly).

It’s probably also worth investigating if you can get reusable wall planners for the future – dry erase ones without a specific year on them so you won’t have to throw them out each summer.

Any other ideas/suggestions?

Compared to rollers, paint trays are super easy to clean (especially if you line them with a carrier bag first) so I don’t know why they were thrown out. There were a couple of emulsion ones and a couple of smaller gloss ones.

We’ve got plenty of trays for painting ourselves but I guess I could rinse them off and offer them on Freecycle or something.

As for reuses, in the past, I’ve used old roller trays as drip trays under seedlings (the deep part is more useful if you’re carrying them around, they have a tendency to wobble off the shelf bit – but that’s fine catching run off if it’s in one place). What else can be done with them?

We’ve had an email from Su:

Sorry about this, as it’s not about recycling or repairing, but I thought some like-minded soul may be able to help!

My query relates to electric kettles. In my house they last, on average about 15 months. I have tried expensive, cheap, stainless steel, plastic, cordless… I’m not sure why they don’t last since I only use them for their intended purpose ie: boiling water, but modern kettles don’t seem to be made to be repaired.

I have been using a stove top kettle on my electric cooker for about a year now, BUT in a morning it’s almost half an hour before I get my pot of tea (and I NEED my tea in a morning!). Plus, I believe that although electric kettles use a lot of power, they use less than the cooker. So my point is this, I want to buy a new kettle, but it needs to be a) energy efficient, b) repairable & c) preferably, as ethical as possible. All ideas gratefully received!

We go through cycles of this – our electric kettle develops some annoying fault which John tries but fails to fix and we decide that electric kettles are a wasteful scam. Then we drag our stove top kettle out of storage and clean it off, only to get incredibly frustrated at how long it takes to boil on the stove and eventually snapping and buying another electric kettle. I think our kettles last about 2 years – so slightly longer than Su’s – but still, a brief enough lifespan to be very wasteful.

So any ideas for Su? There are a number of electric kettles that bill themselves as being eco-friendly – has anyone had any experience of those? Are there any other options?

(Photo by chris2k)

Do you know of any charities that collect used body piercing jewellery? Everyone seems to want gold and these aren’t gold they’re steel. Your earring suggestions don’t apply either because they’re ring and bars.

Marie Curie’s jewellery recycling scheme claims to accept anything – real or costume, broken or working – so I would have thought from a melt-it-down-for-scrap point of view, they’d accept them.

I’ve heard of some body piercers reusing barbells – they have to sterilised them anyway before use and some items are only used for a couple of weeks before being replaced (for example, borrowing from my own experience, the longer bars used for the few swollen weeks after tongue piercings). But I’d be dubious about that, even sterilised, because of how even small nicks & scratches on the jewellery can increase the risk of infection.

Any better reuses or definite recycling ideas for barbells and CBRs (captive bead rings)? What about plugs and tunnels? Anyone done any fun upcycling/repurposing with them?

Can I Compost vitamin tablets? I have two jars in date but have gone moist from the air. What can I do with the bottles?

We’ve covered pill bottles already on the site but the vitamin question is a good one – and I’m not sure of the answer. I suspect it might be “best not”. We’re instructed to always dispose of expired medicines very carefully to avoid risk to the public/wild animals, and to avoid contamination of the environment/water supply. While dietary supplements are generally a lot more benign, there is still some risk, for example, iron can be surprisingly toxic to children, and presumably small animals. I’m not suggesting that many children will hunt around in your compost bin for a feast of pills but the payoff doesn’t really seem worth the risk. I may be wrong though.

I’m also not sure if there will be many reuses for them…

Any suggestions for stopping them going soggy in the first place?

The grill is rusty pretty much all over and there is a rust hole in the base too. My husband wants to throw it out and get another but I’d like to try fixing it first. Please give me some hope that the effort with a wire scrubber will be worth it!

A lot of barbecues at the cheaper end of the market have chrome-plated steel grills and once the chrome gets scratched or otherwise damaged, the exposed steel rusts really quickly. You might get all the rust off now but I’m not sure you’ll be able to keep it off in the future – anyone know any heat/food friendly way to protect it again? If it’s a cast iron grill – most expensive but not uncommon – then you should be able to de-rust it and protect it again like any cast iron pan/appliance.

As for the base, it depends on the size/location of the hole – a small one low down could be turned into a fat trap. Assuming it’s a kettle/barrel type bbq, you could strip it right back to metal (possibly worth doing all over in one go) and repaint it with a heat-proof metal paint (like stove paint) to reduce further rusting. However as someone who has spent far too long stripping metal recently, let me warn you, it’s not exactly a fun pastime.

If you don’t think it’s worth the effort to save this one, learn from this one’s untimely demise when you buy/care for your next one — look for one with a better grill or if it’s already a good one, protect it better in the first place, and don’t leave bbqs outside and uncovered in wet/moist weather.

Any further advice/suggestions?

As I’ve just started spinning wool/yarn, the idea of a full fleece was appealing but also somewhat overwhelming – we said we’d take them if he’d been lumbered with them but otherwise it would be probably best to pass them onto someone else. Aside from spinning, we couldn’t really think of anything to do with them – then he suggested I ask on here for other uses.

We’ve covered man-made fleece jackets on here before but not the from-a-sheep variety. Apparently some people wash them and use them for insulation but there is a problem with moth-attacks.

What else can be done with them?

• I love this simple but cute idea for baked gifts – using an old food can as a baking container and gift packaging in one. I first thought it was biscuits/cookies in the can – it would work well for those too, protecting them from getting crushed.
• These lamps from old piping are great – straddling the line between being industrial and looking like strange bulb-headed creatures!
• Notes from the Frugal Trenches is part way through a “100 Simple Ways to Save” round-up – lots of great ideas that aren’t just frugal, they encourage reducing too (part one; part two; part three; part four)
• As someone currently seeking out baskets, this basket from blue jeans tutorial is definitely going on my to-try list.
• Finally, check out this table runner make by fixing together old doilies – very pretty work.

(Photo by ChasingFireflies)