A few weeks ago, someone emailed me to ask for creative ways to re-use old shopping bags. I directed her to the shopping bags post we did last year and told her about my experience of knitting some flimsy bags into a heavy-duty shopping bag: I used large gauge needles and it was surprisingly easy and fun – until I accidentally leaned on one of the (plastic) needles and snapped it clean in half.

Recalling the story and my clumsiness made me realise I still have the odd knitting needles kicking about in my craft box and I wondered, as I frequently do, “how can I reuse or recycle that?”

I could keep it in my stash to use as a spare in the future but I hope I won’t repeat my snap-happy snapping again so won’t need a spare. My needle stash is already quite sizeable (thanks to eBay and raiding my mum’s old needle collection) for the amount of knitting that I do and keeping spares might make it quickly spin out of control.

But what else can I do with the odd ones? Or what about the couple of bent ones I’ve got a little over-eager about a scarf? Some of them are grey plastic while the bent ones are usually grey-painted metal.

(Photo by n0nnahs)

I do astound myself sometimes: we’ve featured over 300 items on the site so far, from the common place to the less common and the downright weird, but we’ve not yet covered yogurt pots.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t eat the stuff (it’s too closely connected with fruit in my mind and fruit = ick) or perhaps it’s because it’s one of those things that seems so ripe for reuse that it seems too obvious to feature it – but aside from plant pots for seedlings or using as a paint pot, I can’t actually think of that much to do with them – particularly the little tiny kids’ ones.

So what do you do with them?

(Photo by LotusHead)

I’ve recently started going swimming at my local pool and every time I go (three times a week at the moment – yay previously incredibly unfit me!), I see old polyethylene (?) floats waiting in the bin to be thrown away.

The pool is pretty much constantly used to for children’s swimming lessons so they must go through loads of them as they get beaten up and (I guess) start to deteriorate because they’re constantly ducked in chlorine-y water.

The floats are either small, flat boards (about 30cm/12inches square) or long, thin cylinders of foam like giant haircurlers.

I think about asking to take them but worry they’re just end up cluttering up my cellar unless I can think of good ways to reuse them. So any suggestions?

(And yes, I will be using the save-the-swimsuit and reuse suggestions for my old swimming costumes. ;) )

(Oh, and apologies to anyone reading the site through an RSS reader who saw a bunch of spam links at the bottom of a post the other day – we got slightly hacked… We’ve looked into it and hopefully it won’t happen again – but if it does, please let us know — thanks to Helen for the heads-up this time)

We’ve had an email from “Kinjo Jan”, saying:

hello good people, i am new in recycling. would you please tell me if the plastic in the modern cars’ bumpers is recycleable?

That’s a very good question – but I don’t know the answer. I suspect it’s usually fibreglass more than plastic though but may very well be wrong. Does anyone else?

And what about reuses for them?

(Photo by jtunney)

We’ve had an email from Barb, asking:

Hi, I have about two pounds of vegetable shortening I bought last year and didn’t use up that is out of date now and a tad rancid. Does anyone know how this can be reused or recycled? It has been sitting on the kitchen counter for days while I tried to devise a way to reuse it.

Because it’s just a fat, I think you can use it as a general lubricant – and there seems to be a number of household uses for it if it’s not utterly rancid.

Apparently, it can be used to remove tar or lipstick from clothes, ink from hands or surfaces, protect and revitalise wooden balls & chopping boards, help nappy rash, stop snow sticking to a shovel and – something we all need to do constantly – make clown make-up.

You can also apparently use it as an, ahem, personal lubricant but be aware that like Vaseline and all oil-based lubricants, it shouldn’t be used with condoms as it can cause the latex to degrade.

Any other suggestions?