We’ve already looked at reuse ideas for old fashioned lightbulbs but what about recycling for the supposedly greener variety?

A friend of ours, Denyerec, has prodded me a couple of times about recycling energy saving light bulbs and tubes because he’s got a growing pile of them:

I have a fear that the energy saving madness is going to be offset by the environmental damage caused by inevitably casually discarded tubes.

Whenever we’re chatting about it, another friend always points out that they have to be disposed of carefully because of the mercury in all compact fluorescent lamps – but none of us have any particular idea of how to go about doing this.

Any ideas?

(Photo by vranarc)

I use plastic disposable razors. I admit it but I’m not happy about it.

I don’t use them that much – just for my armpits say, once a week (since I’m not that hairy and/or bothered) – but it still seems incredibly wasteful.

I’ve tried using ones where you just replace the blade – but they always go rusty really quickly and so work out really expensive for the amount I use them – and I have a rechargeable electric razor for my legs – but that doesn’t work well on my pits for some reason – so I’m left with the disposable ones. Boo.

Any suggestions for reuses or ways to recycle them? Or other ideas?

(Photo by chris2k)

It’s really starting to feel like spring here and I’ve been sorting out the garden in short bursts over the last week as well as repotting some houseplants for their shortly-to-commence mad growth spurt.

Our compost bin compost tends to have big chunks of material in it so I just dig it into the beds and use shop-bought compost for the houseplants. As I can only carry the small sacks of it back from the shops, I quickly end up with a number of the compost’s plastic bags lying around the garden – they’re quite a heavy yet flexible, opaque plastic and the inside is usually black. They’re pretty strong but do tear if treated too roughly and/or pokily.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve used them to line hanging baskets (black-side out) and collected random plastic pots in them to stop said pots ending up blown all over the street but I’d love to hear it if anyone has any more ideas for reuses.

We’ve had an email from Paul Smith asking:

I’m really interested in how one would recycle a yoga mat? One of the old school, pvc based ones, not the eco friendly one (which I have now).

If Paul means the type of mat I think he means, they’re a long thin piece of foam, about 6ft long and 2ft wide (185cm by 66cm ish) and about half an inch (1cm) thick. Depending on the requirements and the thickness/flexibility of the foam, they can either be rolled up like a camping bedroll or are left flat (the ones at my uni gym were like that).

So any suggestions for reuses? Or are there any recycling options if somewhere (like a gym) was getting rid of them in bulk?

Paul doesn’t say what condition his yoga mat is in – some of the ones at the uni were bashed to smeg at the sides and going thin where they’d been doubled up – so re-use suggestions for falling apart ones would be good too, just in case.

(Photo by bharat – I couldn’t find a picture without a ball in it too, so just imagine that’s not there :) )

A friend’s mum was having an old bedding clear-out recently and I snagged some 1970s pillow cases in the process.

I made one of the pillowcases into two cotton bags – a shopping bag and a smaller one for when we just need to carry a few items – but don’t know what to do with the other two.

At the end of the day, they’re just (mostly) cotton pieces of fabric but like with the shopping bags, it would be nice to take advantage of the fact they’re a retro-pretty fabric, strong yet light and already have strong seams sown into most of the sides.

So any other suggestions for reuses?

(Photo by brainloc)