We’ve had an email from Amanda Bowens, asking for ideas on how to reuse or recycle butter wrappers.

The cheapest blocks of butter that I see tend to be wrapped in heavy duty grease-proof paper – so I guess they could be used as you’d use grease-proof paper – but what about the wrappers with the metallic print on the outside? They’re a bit more foil-y than standard paper but not full on foil-a-go-go.

Are they just paper (so can be recycled with the usual paper recycling) or something different?

Any suggestions for reuses?

(Photo by bb_matt)

I’ve just started making my own jewellery and have been ordering various bits and pieces, earring findings and whatnot, over the internet – resulting in a slew of padded envelopes plopping onto our doormat.

We’ve already addressed normal envelopes and bubble wrap, but what about the jiffy envelopes that combine the two?

I’ll keep some around to reuse for their intended purpose – but has anyone got any ingenious ideas for using up the rest, taking full advantage of their padding and envelope-ness?

(Original photo by lusi)

We’ve had an email from Andrea:

Sometimes I buy assortment packs of adhesive bandages (we call them Band Aids whether they’re Band Aid brand or not) and when I’m through with all the regular ones I’m left with the small round spot ones. I haven’t figured out why that size and shape exists to begin with.

Is there any use for them?

My guess would be that they’re for people who have to inject themselves regularly but since I have a complete and utter needle phobia, I’ve got a pile of them here too. I’ve recently started buying own brand plasters that are just different rectangle shapes but have a number of random shaped ones left over from previous boxes – those little circle ones, and the (for want of a better description) butterfly shaped ones particularly.

So any suggestions for alternative uses?

(Photo of a standard shaped plaster by monique72)

We’ve had an email from Katy Duvall:

I was cleaning out my cupboards yesterday and found forgotten nearly full bottle of soy sauce. It was so forgotten about that it went out of date nearly two years ago! My boyf thinks we should just bin it but it’s such a big bottle that I’d rather not. Any ideas?

I’m always skeptical of dates on condiments – or rather I forget to check them and find we’ve been using the same jar of mustard for about three years – so if it looked ok, I’d be tempted to use it anyway – but any other suggestions?

I wonder if dark soy can be used for dyeing/staining purposes… At the moment, I can only think of using it to “antique” paper for making ye olde treasure maps but I wonder if it can be used on wood or the like too. Anyone know?

We’ve looked a little toilet tubes and giant big tubes in the past but what about ones more in the middle of the size range?

I got sent a (freebie promotional) tshirt from the US a couple of weeks ago and for some reason they decided to send it in a solid cardboard poster tube instead of an envelope or postal bag.

Said tube has sat around the living room ever since with a “how can I be reused?” question mark hanging over its head. It’s a solid cardboard tube, about 50cm long (20″) with plastic caps at each end (one of them with a lip to make it easy to take out).

Now, thanks to one of our friend’s newly-discovered love of expensive whisky, it’s also now been joined by a similar whisky bottle tube – slightly lighter cardboard but similar plastic caps.

I’ve kept them to this point for reuse if I need to send anything small poster-ish through the post but that’s quite unlikely – so any other suggestions?