After the post the other week about umbrella covers, it made me think about the umbrellas themselves.

I have repaired my current umbrella on a number of occasions whenever the cover become detached from the spikes but the fabric at the tips is getting weak now from its frequent visits from the sewing kit. I’ve also had to throw them away in the past because they’ve done that inverting in the wind thing, snapped a prong and refused to close properly from then on.

So any suggestions on how the mechanism or the (cute, strong, water-resistant) fabric could be reused? Any tips for fixing them would also be appreciated!

(Photo by neza)

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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We’ve had an email from Hannah Phillips asking if anyone has any ideas on how to recycle old water filter cartridges.

Hannah started using water filters because she thought it would be less wasteful than buying bottled water – less plastic etc – but now has the cartridges to dispose of instead.

Brita brand filters (which seem to be one of the most prominent in the UK as far as I’ve seen) say all their cartridges can be recycled but what about other brands?

And how about reusing them rather than sending them in for recycling?

(Photo by jan-willem)

Had an email from Bill about a bathroom suite:

I have a perfectly good condition bathroom suite, bath, WC basin and pedestal that have been removed during an upgrade.

Any ideas please?

I’ve already suggested Freecycle to him to see if anyone else could use it as a bathroom suite and I also think it could look pretty cool as alternative garden furniture – but any other suggestions for reusing bits of it or a whole?

(Photo by sbennumi)

When he can be bothered, John writes a hideously geeky webcomic and we sell tshirts based on the “characters”. To ease the whole packaging and posting process, I use laser-printed mailing labels and while I try to minimise waste by only printing in full sheets of 21 labels at a time (I always need return address stickers), there is always a sheet of A4 ‘waxed’ paper left after I peel off the labels.

I doubt it’s properly waxed paper but it’s got a kinda non-stick coating on it so the labels peel off easily. My betting is that said ‘wax’ is more than likely to be plastic-based so potentially throws up some issues for recycling.

Does anyone know if these spent sheets can be recycled with normal printer paper? And either way, does anyone have any ideas for how these sheets could be re-used around the home or office? I also end up with loads of small ‘waxed’ sheets from customs and Airmails stickers so any suggestions for smaller sizes would be great too.