How can I reuse or recycle … old sieves?

SievesWe’ve got a couple of sieves that I’ve had for years. If I remember rightly, I bought a pack of three of them at the 50p shop in Liverpool before inflation hit and the 50p shop turned into a Poundland-esque effort.

Needless to say, they weren’t the finest quality sieves to start with and after years of use, they’re not going to be winning any “best sieve in the world” contests.

They’re flimsy plastic and the edges of the sieve seem to be permanently gacked up with flour/water glue as well as tea stains from being used as a tea strainer so they’re not really suitable for culinary uses any more.

But what can we do with them instead? They’re a bit fine for using in the garden for getting the stones out of soil but I’m sure there must be other possibilities. Any suggestions?

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6 Responses to “How can I reuse or recycle … old sieves?”


  1. pttr says:

    use’m for making screens for your homemade bong

  2. Emma says:

    Depending on how fine the netting is, kids could use them when fishing in rock pools.

  3. rita says:

    I use an old one to skim off the green plant growth that chokes my small pond in the summer.

  4. Amanda Kerik says:

    Use them to shape soil pellets for starting seeds.

    Add a lot of water to some soil, press the soil into the sieve, the water will run through and then pop the pellet out.

    If they were cleaner, I’d suggest you hand them to kids to play kitchen with.

  5. Ryan says:

    You could use them to strain latex paint, although they look pretty small. If you connected it to some sort of funnel (say an old detergent bottle with the bottom cut out) you could use make use of clumpy paint

  6. carrie says:

    you can use these as molds for making little gift baskets. using the paper-making technique (seen elsewhere on this site and easily findable online), use these instead of the flat screens typically used to make paper.



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