Why?

1. So you don’t forget about the things – or get blind to them

It’s so easy to forget about things once they’re tucked away in a cupboard – the scratty tinsel, the old electronic device that’s been replaced, the party dress you won’t probably wear again until next Christmas when it might be outdated or not fit… We’re terrible at putting things on a shelf “just in case” then not only forgetting them but getting blind to the fact they’re unwanted – if we didn’t want them, why have we kept them so long? – or even there (I get to the point where I just look through rather than at clutter around the place).

2. Charity shops are often low on stock

This was apparently a particularly serious problem last year with the bad weather – charity shops saw donations drop by nearly a third year-on-year – but every year, they see an understandable drop in donations in November & December compared to the rest of the year. Help them fill back up again!

3. To catch people while they’re still thinking about Christmas

This is particularly important for Christmas decorations or other themed items. I know a lot of people who buy their Christmas wrapping paper, cards and novelty gifts in the previous year’s January sales – saves a lot of money. Fresh off the back of Christmas, people remember how expensive it is and think ahead to minimise the issue the following year. By May or June though, last Christmas is a long distant memory and next Christmas is still an eon away – and people will be less interested. Now though, people will stash your spare goodies away along with their own Christmas stash.

4. To let other people get full use out of something

Electronics, DVDs and fashion etc are all relatively time-sensitive things and if they get left on a shelf, they’ll become increasingly obsolete the longer they wait up there. I kept hold of lots of pre-recorded VHSes “just in case” then found it nearly impossible to give them away. The batteries in electronics die – or often refuse to charge again if left “empty” for long enough. Much better for someone else to get some use out of them instead!

5. To stop someone else having to buy new-new

This is the ultimate reason we pass stuff on – so our items don’t end up in landfill and someone else doesn’t have to buy a brand new product that has been made with brand new resources.

How to pass stuff on

• Your local Freecycle/Freegle group
• Charity shops/op shops/thrift shops
• Swishing parties – for clothes & accessories mostly but if you’re running it, you can set the terms depending on your friends
• Sell it via eBay or a specialist site/event such as NCT’s Nearly New events
• Recycling banks for clothes & shoes at supermarkets
• Re-gift — but only if you’re sure the person will like it more than you or you’re just passing on the problem!

Have you got Christmas stuff or presents that you think should go? How will you be getting rid of them?

Our 2010 round-up of our favourite ideas for making upcycled/recycled Christmas decorations has been very popular this year and I hope it’s provided lots of people with lots of inspiration – but if you’ve still got a little space to fill before the weekend, here are some more last minute ideas:

Paper wreaths have been very popular over the last couple of years but I love this one from EcoEmpire because, aside from staples, it’s entirely made from reusing household waste – newspaper, cereal boxes and a little scrap of ribbon (Kat suggests the loops from clothes – I’ve got a drawer full of those!)

Sticking with paper crafts, I also love these paper ball ornaments – either as individual baubles or strung together into a garland. I also love the idea of using foil packaging to make silver or otherwise shiny ones.

These letter ornaments, decorated with scraps from old sweaters, would also work well on their own or as part of a garland spelling out a holiday greeting/special word. “Merry Christmas” if you’ve got a lot of scraps, “joy” if you haven’t ;)

If you prefer your decorations a little more natural, these mini Christmas trees made from twigs are just fab – a simple idea but really nicely executed.

The Crafty Green Poet also reminded me that you don’t have to just use special Christmas ornaments on your tree – any ornaments or little items that don’t usually see the light of day can be hung up on there – even earrings on smaller trees for a little sparkle/bead-y delight.

Finally, Deb/Urbanwide sent me this fun Nativity scene idea: the whole Nativity crew painted on champagne corks. Perfect if little ones want to play with the scene – although if you want one for this year, you’ll have to get working on drinking all the champagne ASAP ;) (A slightly healthier alternative – but one that needs nearly as much forethought – is to use Actimel bottles for the bodies instead.)

Anyone else got any fun recycled Christmas decoration makes or discoveries to share?

(Photos © EcoEmpire & MicheleMadeMe respectively)

But care should be taken with cooked veg and the like – if it’s been cooked with meat, fish or dairy, or soaked in a rich meaty gravy etc, the smell of that may attract undesirable vermin to the pile. Some people (particularly people with sealed bins or wormeries) are happy to chance it but other people are more cautious.

Anyway, we all know it’s much better to use them up in some other way first rather than just slinging them into the compost.

Sunday roast leftovers were always the basis of Monday night dinner in my house when I was growing up. The meat would be the star of another meal – chicken curry sticks in my mind most clearly but there were other things too – and I remember my mum used any leftover veg to make bubble and squeak.

What do you make with your Sunday roast/Christmas dinner leftovers?

We’re not really roast eaters now and steamed/boiled veg is an area in which we’re actually pretty good at only cooking what we need – but any leftovers we do have usually go down to the chickens as treats. I’ve heard you can also use them in homemade dog food.

Do you do anything else with your leftovers?

I love silly Christmas jumpers but not to wear, god, not to wear! I’m thinking of getting some to make into Christmas cushion covers but thought I’d ask to see if you had any ideas for making other things from them too and the bits like the sleeves etc.

Some of the various sweater-to-cushion-cover tutorials I’ve seen have used the sleeves to make a flap like on a housewife style pillow. Another tutorial suggests making patchwork cushion covers – depending on the patch size/style, that could easily use up all the different bits of a jumper. Sleeves could also be used to make hot water bottle covers, with the cuff “hugging” the neck of the bottle.

Other ideas for the jumpers: lots of people make Christmas stockings out of old jumpers – the sleeves might be enough for that too. Could they also be cut up to make Christmas placemats or pot holders? If they’ve got a high wool content, they could be felted for extra heat protection (although that would probably distort the pattern). Or how about a skirt for the Christmas tree if it’s in a pot?

Any other suggestions for Edie?

(Photo by lisa humes)

• 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)

Individual turkey and stilton pies

I love this idea since a lot of people have leftover stilton around at Christmas too. The already cooked turkey won’t need as long in the frying pan though – add it with the mushrooms rather than before the sweet potato.

Making individual pies are also a great idea for this time of year when people are extra busy – these guys can be frozen then defrosted and cooked as needed rather than a big pie which has to be eaten all at once.

• Phil Vickery’s Individual Turkey and stilton pies

Hearty leftover turkey broth with bacon croutons

Come on, you just drooled reading that title didn’t you? I certainly did! *wipes keyboard*

Another fab recipe because you’ll have most, if not all, of the ingredients on hand from Christmas dinner preparations – such as root veg and streaky bacon – and the croutons also use up day-old/going-stale bread. If you’re really organised you can make the stock from the turkey carcass first too (see side panel below).

• Hearty leftover turkey broth with bacon croutons @ BritishTurkey

Leftover turkey enchiladas

After stodgy roasts and puddings (mmm stodgy food), this recipe is refreshingly light. Not at all seasonal with the courgette and peppers but still, mmm! If you haven’t quite got enough turkey, pad it out with pinto or kidney beans.

(I also like the idea of stacking them like a pie rather than in rolls.)

• Turkey enchiladas @ BBCFood

Turkey Jambalaya

And keep with New World flavours, this is awesome and I’m drooling again at the thought of it. Leftover turkey, rings of some sort of smoked/spicy sausage, colourful veg and spices – a surprisingly quick but delicious option.

• Turkey jambalaya @ Savoury Notebook

Turkey & Chickpea (Coconut) Curry

Finally, I couldn’t do a leftover turkey round-up without including a curry – firstly, because turkey curry is a delicious cliche and secondly because I’m all about spiceness!

This recipe from the wonderful people at LoveFoodHateWaste is effectively two curries in one – yummy enough on its own but transformed into something a bit more Thai flavoured with the addition of coconut milk.

• Turkey & Chickpea (Coconut) Curry @ LoveFoodHateWaste

What will you do with your leftover turkey? What are your favourite recipes?

So… Christmas crackers. In one of the many, many newspaper articles about having a frugal Christmas during the New Austerity Age, I read that making Christmas crackers is a false economy – because it often costs more to make them at home than you can buy them for in the shops.

But money isn’t everything – homemade ones can be a lot lower waste – using up household rubbish and can contain actually useful (or delicious) prizes rather than bits of plastic tat.

There are many tutorials online for making basic crackers out of toilet rolls tubes and squares of Christmas wrapping paper (with purpose-bought crackers snaps for that bit of bang) but I wondered if anyone had any ideas for making them more interesting or creative.

Is it possible to make reusable Christmas crackers? The body refillable each year?

And does anyone make their own paper hats to go inside them?

(There is a strong “reduce” angle here obviously – both to save on money and waste, but for many people they’re an essential part of the Christmas tradition so best try to reduce as much as possible by reusing and recycling instead.)

(If you’re saying to yourself “what on earth is a Christmas cracker?”, just ignore this post – it’s a silly British thing.)

(There are a lot of asides in this post, aren’t there?)

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.

We don’t celebrate Christmas but I know that one or two people around the world do – and some of those people have Advent calendars to open on the run up to the 25th.

When I was a kid, I’m pretty sure my mum gave us the same calendar several years running, with the doors closed neatly back into place – it didn’t matter because the joy of opening the door to see what was behind it was enough. Then when I was my early teens in the early 1990s, chocolate advent calendars suddenly became cheap and wide available, the chocolate rather than the drawing of the bell or the reindeer became the goal and the calendar was suddenly disposable.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! There are some great examples of creative – and reusable – advent calendars out there – such as the this spool advent calendar kit from Cathe Holden of Just Something I Made – I imagine something similar could be made by recycling any sort of plastic tubing or even decorated toilet roll tubes if you haven’t got 24 cotton spools to hand. I love the idea of having treasure hunt elements to the messages or having Christmas preparation activities to-dos – or they could be silly jokes to get everyone warmed up for their Christmas crackers.

I’ve also seen some examples where people have gathered together 24 boxes – they could be old packaging painted or covered in paper as well as numbered – and stuck them together to make a countdown calendar with plenty of storage. They wouldn’t have to be filled with treats or gifts – tree decorations would work well – many kids would love to decorate the tree an item at a time as each item is revealed. And weekend days could be filled with craft supplies that they have to make into a tree decoration.

And it’s not strictly recycled but I also love the reusability of Attic 24 Lucy’s advent garland – it could be recycled if you used reclaimed yarn or upcycled fabric to make sewn stars instead of crochet).

Have you made an advert calendar by reusing or recycling anything?

Or have you seen any more great examples out and about on the web?

There are lots of suggestions out there for making biscuits, cakes or jams, or knitting or crocheting something pretty — but if you’re after a truly frugal Christmas, all those ingredients & yarns add up: what about things which you can make by reusing/recycling/upcycling things from around the home?

Here are my favourite ideas for simple & frugal upcycled Christmas presents:

1. Hankies

Handkerchiefs are easy to make from any soft old cotton fabric – bedding or clothing for example. They’re simple but always useful – and help the recipient cut down on their disposable tissue usage too.

Don’t feel they have to be boring white – I made the ones in the picture out of an old pink gingham shirt – and consider monogramming/embroidering them to make them extra special.

(Use 100% cotton fabric where possible and 100% cotton yarn too so that they can handle being washed at a hot temperature if needs be.)

2. Reusable shopping bags

Similarly practical, there are one metric bajillion tutorials out there for making fun shopping bags from pillowcases, t-shirts, scraps of yarn, old plastic carrier bags… You name it, you can make a shopping bag out of it!

Pick your poison depending on your skill set and again, customise/personalise it to suit the recipient.

If you’re giving them other presents at the same time, use the bag instead of wrapping paper to save even more waste.

3. Jewellery

We regularly feature ace examples of upcycled jewellery on here – people taking food packaging and other waste materials, and transforming them into wonderful bracelets, necklaces, earrings and other accessories.

If inspiration isn’t enough, there are plenty of tutorials out there too – for example, turn a drinks can into a flower brooch, or plastic bottle earrings, or a bottle cap charm bracelet.

4. Wooden garden planters

If woodworking is more your thing than sewing or jewellery making, turn old pallets or other scrap wood into wooden garden planters. They’re easy to work with and widely available – keep an eye out when passing skips or in industrial areas.

5. Raid your seed stash – make envelopes & plant labels from scrap

And what about something to go in those new planters? If you grow your own flowers or veg, you probably have a stash of surplus seeds – share your favourites!

Make small seed envelopes out of scrap paper – the insides of security envelopes or brown paper look fab – and write the sowing details on the outside – and how about including an upcycled plant label too? You can make those from lolly sticks or metal strips cut from drinks cans.

6. Personalised notebooks

Or how about making a notebook/journal from an old hardback book? Personalise it by finding something by your gift-ee’s favourite author – or a favourite book from childhood.

What are you making people for Christmas? What are your favourite upcycled handmade items? What would you like to receive from other people!?

Does anyone know how to make Christmas Tree Fairies from Chicken or Turkey wishbones. I have seen them made but don’t know how to make them. Thank you

I’ve never seen them – and Google isn’t helping me either so I can’t be any help. Anyone else know more about them? Have you made one? And if so, got any hints/tips to get Eileen started?

Or has anyone got a picture of one so we can see what Eileen means?

(Yes, I know I’m posting about Christmas in November but I thought it might be worth posting it ahead of Thursday, when one or two of our USian readers might be eating turkey.)

How can I reuse or recycle those cheap, tiny plastic toys that come in Christmas crackers, snack packets and the like, please? These are mostly just brittle, non-recyclable plastic ‘shapes’, not like the playable and durable fast food premiums. I don’t buy them, but what do I do with the bunch I’ve acquired over the years at parties and such? Even if I try to reduce by not accepting them, they would have been purchased, and would be given out to others anyway, even if I decline. Thank you in advance!

As I explained last month, I don’t celebrate Christmas so it comes across as Bah-humbug when I say it, but ugh, I hate Christmas crackers – so much waste for a split second of cheer. I understand the “it’s hard to reduce” point – they’ve already been bought and few people want to kick up a fuss and refuse to pull one at a party – but so. much. waste. One idea for the future might be to ask if you can provide the crackers for the party – you can then make them out of recycled materials and/or at least know exactly how to recycle all the paper waste, and you can include small but actually useful items as opposed to the random useless stuff you get in commercial ones.

But what to do with the commercial stuff – those little plastic toys? I know a number of people who would use them to make fun costume jewellery or mobile phone charms. You could also use them in little terrariums. Other ideas?

Pine needles can be composted – they can be quite acidic though so if that’s undesirable, make sure you balance them out in your heap with some alkali things (wood ash, for example). Also don’t drop a heavy layer into the heap all in one place – they sit pretty densely together and can restrict airflow.

They can be used for lots of other things too – Crunchy Chicken linked to a range of recipes using pine needles in drinks and biscuits, and you can use them to stuff pin cushions.

Any other suggestions?

Oh, and happy Christmas to those that celebrate it :)

My lucky little boys get too many presents to fit into an actual stocking. In the past, I’ve got them plastic bags from the Christmas shop but when I was thinking about what to do for them this year, I remembered the novelty glittery T-shirts I had to wear for work last year. I turned them inside out, sewed along the bottom and righted them again, instant festive swag bags!

A great idea, Beth. I’ve also seen pillowcases used in the same way – felt letters and decorations tacked on so they can be removed and used as pillowcases again – and there are plenty of patterns out there for making keepsake stockings out of scraps (although they’re more like keepsake decorations instead of present-filled ones).

Another idea – although for adults more than kids – is to give a nice reusable shopping bag as part of the gift instead of using a gift bag: if it’s not too overtly Christmassy, they’ll be able to use it all year around. There are plenty of ways to reuse/recycle/upcycle things into shopping bags – including out of tshirts and vest tops.

Any other specific stocking/swag bag suggestions though?

(Photo by arttg)

I haven’t celebrated Christmas for about a decade. Because I’ve got a tiny-small family, Christmas was never a big deal in our house and my participation in it has waned as the years went on until I stopped celebrating it altogether in about 2001-2002. I’m not a Christian so all that side of things is lost on me, I see my family whenever I want to, and I give gifts when I see/make something for someone rather than waiting until a date in December. For the last few years, I’ve worked on Christmas day – a perfect low-traffic day for new introducing designs or features for websites we run. True, part of it is a somewhat cynical reaction to the huge amount of waste and excess at this time of year, but it’s not that I’m particularly bah humbug about it: I just don’t participate in it in the same way many people don’t celebrate, for example, Eid or Hanukkah.

The gifts thing though is still a bit of a problem. In previous years, we’ve had long, difficult arguments with our families over gift giving. Giving is a big part of Christmas for them and as much as we’ve tried to push them that way, giving to charities on our behalf just isn’t the same for them. We end up feeling selfish for not letting them buy stuff for us and ungrateful for not willingly accepting the stuff they inevitable do buy for us. But we spend all year trying very hard not to buy stuff we don’t need, to reduce our consumption and our waste output, and then get a selection of random unneeded things, often novelty items wrapped in one-time-use shiny paper and bows. I realise they’re gifts given out of love but it’s not just that – there is so much pressure to give commercially bought gifts at Christmas – last year, my mum said she felt she had to give me things because she’d bought stuff for my brother and it wouldn’t be fair otherwise. (I didn’t care about “fairness” but it was a big deal to her.)

Has anyone else been in a similar situation on the giving or receiving end? What strategies have you used to deal with it? I always thought Christmas lists to family as an adult were a bit snotty but I guess that would solve the unwanted/unneeded problem. I realise that the whole issue is a bit of a snotty, my-diamond-shoes-are-too-tight one but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

(Photo by Vanessa Fitzgerald)

Taking our tree down yesterday, we found 6 (six!) baubles were pretty much destroyed and only staying together through some sort of Christmas miracle and another 10 were fractured and set to go the same way. Bloomin’ cats!

They’re glass so I was thinking I could recycle them with our normal glass recycling but then my fella pointed out that they might not be the same type of glass and they’re all painted/varnished too.

Can we recycle them or not?

I’m not 100% sure but I suspect the answer is no because of the layer of paint – especially if the paint is some sort of acrylic matte stuff or is glittery. Anyone know for sure?

Depending on quite how smashed they are, you might be able to renovate some of them to make a feature of the broken bits – perhaps poke a thin paintbrush through a hole and varnish the insides to hold the cracks together, then place a tiny decoration in there.

Failing that, wrap them in some newspaper (so bits of glass don’t fly everywhere) and smash them up into smaller pieces, then use them to do a mosiac design on, say, a photo frame or something.

Any other reuse suggestions – other than getting baubles that bounce in the future? ;)

(Photo by fishmonk)

“Chocolate”-filled advent calendars only really popped onto my radar in my early teens and I have a sneaking suspicion that before then we used to just use the same advent calendar each year – the doors carefully pressed closed again when everything went back in the loft in January. Even if that wasn’t the case, they’d have been easier to recycle because they were just sheets of cardboard rather than the present cardboard/plastic/cardboard sandwiches.

So any ideas for reuses? I guess the cardboard could be torn off for reuse/recycling but without the cardboard, is the plastic at all sturdy enough to be used for Zac Efron* shaped jelly moulds or whatever?

And, to avoid this waste in the future, anyone know of any good reusable ones – or got instructions on how to make them?

(On a related note, I’ve updated our Recycle This Guide to Recycling At Christmas for 2008 – but if you can think of anything else to include or great suggestions I’ve missed, do let me know.)

* He’s the dreamy hunk guy in High School Musical. I know far more about all this stuff than anyone could ever want to know. I also can identify/name each of the Jonas Brothers and know the difference between Selena Gomez and her BFF Demi Lovato. No self-respecting 29 year old should know this stuff. Bah.

We took our decorations down last week and some of the long chains broke. They’re the shiny foil type – can they be recycled?

Now I’m not sure whether they’re actually made from foil – I suspect it is more likely to be plastic but I’m not sure. Anyone know?

If they are made from plastic or are even just part plastic, I doubt you’ll be able to recycle them with your normal foil/cans/metals recycling so any reuse suggestions?

When I was a kid and our decorations used to get too scratty to use in the living room etc, I used to snag them to use in my bedroom instead so maybe keep them for kids to use next year – or shorter lengths could also be used to decorate a cubicle or the like at work.

You could also take advantage of the fact they’re light and for want of a better word, fluffy, and use them for protective packaging when sending items through the post or around presents in gift boxes.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by bugdog)

Most local council tips provide Christmas tree recycling these days – take your tree along to your local household waste collection site and they’ll shred it for use as ground cover or the like.

But what if you can’t get it to a tip? Some councils pick them up from your home if you ask for collection but how can they be otherwise used around the home and garden?

We’ve covered tree branches in general in the past but are there any pine tree specific things?

(Beautiful photo by soultga)

“it’s easy with the Recycle This guide!”

(Photo by LuisFico of a very cool tree made from light)

I just put my Christmas tree up this week and was disappointed to find that three strands of lights aren’t working. I hate to throw them in out, but what can I do with them?

It’s early in the festive season but I suspect a number of people will be hitting the same snag around about now. I’ve seen Christmas tree lights used in all sorts of non-festive places – but they’ve all been working.

Given the amount of little bulbs and wire involved, it’s probably one of those things that is, unfortunately, cheaper to replace than to fix these days – but has anyone got any trouble-shooting tips to get them working again?

But if that doesn’t fix the problem, what other options are there to reuse them either in all or in parts?

(Photo by singhajay)

Has anyone got any recipes or other suggestions of how the great Christmas leftover turkey mountain can be used up?

(And if you’re interested: we’ve already covered greetings/Christmas cards and wrapping paper elsewhere, if you want suggestions on how to reuse that sort of thing : ) )

(Photo by LuisFico of a very cool tree made from light)