I was re-watching Juno the other day and it gave me an “ooh, how could I recycle…” moment.

For those who don’t know, Juno is an interesting and funny film about the titular character’s unplanned pregnancy at 16. While Juno herself is a little too wise-cracking for me, the rest of the characters and performances are great so I wasn’t too upset when it got the Best Original Screenplay last month (I’d have given it to Lars and the Real Girl ahead of Juno but the Academy didn’t put me in control of picking the winners this year, boo).

ANYWAY, the father of the baby in the film, Bleeker, has an obsession with orange TicTacs and at one point, he opens his postbox to find Juno and her best friend have filled it with a hundred boxes of the things as a gesture of Juno’s love for him. Since I’m a bit of a recycling geek, my first thought wasn’t “aww, cute”, it was “once fictional Bleeker has munched his way through those, what could he do with the boxes?”

So any suggestions? If you’re not familiar with the low-cal sweets, the clear plastic box is about 5cm (2.5inches) by 3cm (1.5inches) and about 1cm (0.5inch) thick with a little flip lid at the top.

(Photo by bruno-free)

We’ve had another email from our good suggesting friend, [Am]/Delusion:

Me again, I have just managed to find a company that will recycle floppy discs (as well as shred the confidential information) however now that the mass of floppies have gone I am left with several different shaped floppy disk boxes.

Any suggestions on what I could do with them?

I’ve attached a photo of three different styles of boxes i have!

We’ve got a couple of these lying around too and I’ve got one of those divider ones earmarked for that long, long, long awaited day that I get organised – I thought I could use it for recipe cards.

Any other suggestions?

We’ve already covered a number of Valentine’s Day type things:

• Dried fresh flowers – such as roses
• Greetings cards
• Wrapping paper

And while we’ve thought about the wrapping on individual chocolates, we haven’t thought about the chocolate boxes themselves.

Some of them – particularly the high end, Valentine’s Day ish ones – are quite pretty and I’ve used them in the past for storing letters and the like. But what about other reuses? Have

Some boxes have formed plastic to hold the individual chocolates – like cake packaging – so it would be great if anyone had recycling ideas for those too.

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John and I are breakfast cereal-fanatics at the moment and are munching our way through box after box of pre-sweetened, chocolate-flavour flavoured puffed nonsense (me) and dull, wholewheat goodness (him).

Most of our favourite cereals come in plastic bags within glossy-printed cardboard boxes so we’re left with a lot of rubbish at the end of each pack.

When I was small, cereal boxes were regularly harvested for their card but I don’t do as much cutting and sticking for fun now – and when I do need some non-corrugated card, cat food boxes tend to be sturdier (if slightly smelling of fish and ash).

As with most paper products, they will compost down but some people worry about the full colour printed designs – some inks are toxic and will leech chemicals into the compost.

Any reusing or recycling for the card sides or the boxes as a whole?

(Photo by simbncn)

Another suggestion from Em:

Thanks for the light bulb ideas – really great.

Cheers, Em

We use them until they’re dead too and I worry about reusing them if they’re food gacky – but any suggestions anyway, particularly if the gack level is low?

(Oh, and I’ve also had an email from a chap called Antony who wants to find a company that makes cardboard boxes from recycled cardboard – if anyone has any ideas, leave a comment below or email me and I’ll forward along the message)