I can’t stand anything in my ears but I have a few friends who love their music delivered right to their ear drums.

For one reason or another, they go through headphones like billy-o. Sometimes the wires break or get damaged and sometimes it’s one or other of the ear pieces that goes – and given the amount of people using iPods and the like these days, thousands of pairs of broken headphones must end up on the rubbish tip each week.

So any suggestions for ways to recycle or reuse them? Is cannibalisation possible – taking working bits from a couple of pairs and sticking them together? And what about preventative measures to stop them breaking in the first place?

(Photo by ravuri_rp)

We’ve had an email from Chris Slowe about soap:

It’s unwieldy at the best of times but when you get near the end of a bar of soap it starts falling to pieces and is practically unusable. Even worse a friend of our bought us a cake made out of soap! It’s finally being used for its inherent properties but is falling to pieces. Now if there was only some way of reconstituting all those bits into a new bar… Can it be squashed, melted back together again? Any ideas?

We had some soapy suggestions back on the old tights post which made me think we’d covered this already – so good call Chris for noticing we hadn’t.

I know it can be melted back into a single bar or made into liquid soap/laundry soap but I’ve never done that myself – any soapmakers got any advice?

Or anyone got any other reusing or recycling ideas for the slithers?

(Photo by mfrietsch)

John’s Grandma grows all sorts of fruits and vegetables in her garden and has a number of huge herb plants and a few weeks ago, John came home from there with a number of branches hacked off from one of the rosemary bushes.

The branches had actually been cut off for someone else to replant in their own garden but nothing had come of it and by the time we got hold of them, the branches and attached “leaves” dried out.

We have far more than we could ever use for culinary purposes (particularly since we don’t often use rosemary in our cooking) so are looking for other ideas for using it up. Any suggestions?

(Photo by kris_b)

Kate’s other suggestion was expanded polystyrene foam packaging because while we’ve covered loose polystyrene peanuts and sheets of foam, we haven’t mentioned those nasty squeaky environmental nightmares yet.

Any ideas for moulded polystyrene that supports electrical stuff in transit? I can’t believe manufacturers aren’t forced to collect it, chibble it up and remould it into something else. Hate throwing it in the bin but what else can you do with it?

Despite hating the feel and sound of it when it rubs against itself (iccccccck), I break it up to use at the bottom of plant pots or to raise the pot a bit higher if it’s sitting low in a planter – but that’s usually just because I’ve not thought of anything else to do with it and it’s just sitting there in the garden when I need something vaguely it shaped.

So any other suggestions?
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Had an email last week from Kate Spencer. She had lots of good ideas for ways we can develop the sites (thanks Kate!) and a couple of suggestions so here’s the first:

I’m busy tidying up after Christmas, and because I have a 3 year old I have lots of those annoying plastic ties that manufacturers use to fasten toys into the packaging.

She realises there are some obvious reuses – such as bag-ties, “I fastened our Christmas lights onto our balcony with them” and to tie-up plants in the garden – but wanted to know if anyone has any other suggestions.

For anyone not familiar with what she means, it’s little thin strips of wire coated in plastic that can be bent over and the ends twisted together to make a secure (ish) tie. They’re also used in computer components packaging and that sort of thing. The photo is of the lightweight sandwich bag equivalent – because I couldn’t find any others. : )

(Oh, and happy new year everyone!)