Not one of our usual “how can I recycle/reduce/make this?” type questions but I’m hoping some of you might be able to give me some advice.

About once a week, some ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS jokers leave comments on the site, attempting to insult us all and bragging about how they’re more than delighted to send whatever item were discussing to landfill – and I just don’t know how to respond to them, other than assuming they’re trolls and pressing the delete key.

I personally have very clear opinions on the environment and climate change (and, well, everything to be frank ;) ) but by and large, I keep that off the site – as much as I want everyone to be a dirty hippy like me, it’s not what the site’s about. Everyone has their own motives for reducing, reusing and recycling, I just hope that the ideas on this site can help inspire people no matter why they’re doing it.

But these wacky commenters… Ok, sometimes our questions/ideas can be a bit crunchy but we’re not forcing them on people so I don’t know why they’re responding like that. Aside from it possibly being a manifestation of guilt or the like, I don’t understand how someone can get so venomous about someone else wanting to reuse a toilet roll tube to grow seedlings in.

Other recycling/green bloggers – do you get similar comments? How do you respond to them?

Does anyone come across these people in real life too, where it’s not as easy to just hit the delete button and ignore them?

On Friday night, we killed, plucked & butchered two chickens. As you do.

To be accurate, the wonderful John B and my John did the killing, then my John’s brother Chris and I joined them in plucking, then John B showed me how to dress the chicken, and then I showed Chris. Chris handreared the chickens from day old chicks but had to give them up a couple of months ago ahead of the arrival of his son, Zachary on Valentine’s Day/Chinese New Year. We weren’t ready to take them on yet so John B, who is wonderful as I’ve said, offered to foster them until we were up and running. Then this week, he discovered the two he thought were boys, were definitely boys, and randy boys at that – and his girls were getting upset/hurt from being constantly jumped on. The boys had to go. (I’ve written up the full story on my personal blog.)

It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t my favourite way to spend a Friday night, but it wasn’t as horrific as I thought it would be. And when we ate our chicken for dinner last night, there was far far less cognitive dissonance than we’d ever had before while eating meat: on Friday evening, the chicken was flapping around in John’s arms, then on Sunday, it was in a wonderfully spicy sauce. (We tried some by itself too and it had a good flavour – they were a laying rather than meat breed so it wasn’t mind-blowing but it was nice.)

Between one thing and another, we used up a lot of the birds – from their livers to their feet – but their feathers didn’t lend themselves so easily kitchen delights. On John B’s recommendation, we just dumped them all in the compost heap but you know me, my mind instantly went to reusing & recycling ideas. Composting is alright as a reuse, but I wonder if there are better things…

Apparently, there are a number of research ideas of things to do with the bajillions of feathers sent to waste by the mass chicken production industry – a diverse selection of things from making circuit boards & biodegradable plant pots to using them to store biofuel and hydrogen fuel – but that’s not exactly stuff we can do at home though.

So any suggestions?

I usually forget about Recycle This’s birthday and only remember in a rush of guilt a few weeks afterwards but for once I remembered – Recycle This is four year old today!

As I mention on the About page, we were inspired to make the site after eating a bowl of pistachio nuts and wondering what we could do with the shells. We came up with the idea one night and just about 12 hours later, the site was up and running!

In the last four years, we’ve covered nearly 800 items and had nearly inspiring 11,000 ideas in reply, been mentioned in the national & international press on numerous occasions, and I’ve had hundreds of interesting e-conversations with wonderful people from all over the world.

Thank you all so much for making these past four years so much fun!

(Photo by Joccay)

Over on the Suggestion page, Jill asked:

How can you recycle old, unused, unwanted incense sticks?

I was cleaning and found an old box of them. I hear you can still burn them, but I’m not into smelly stuff any more and I hear certain kinds may have toxic ingredients (which is why I don’t want to try composting them).

Short of giving them to someone else, do you have any ideas?

I think a lot of people will be in the same position as Jill – nearly full boxes of them tucked at the back of cupboards after they’ve decided they don’t like the smell or don’t want to use them any more.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some good reuses for them in the past but searching now, I can only find suggestions for things to reuse as incense stick holders – so I’m going to have to defer to the wonderful Recycle This community — any ideas?

(Photo by LittleMan)

We’ve had an email from Su:

Although is not strictly a recycle or indeed repair, I nonetheless need help!

I bought a lovely dress in a second hand shop which I just know I would get loads of wear from if only I could remove the smell! It seems to have been washed in a very highly perfumed washing powder or maybe fabric conditioner. Unfortunately, I am very susceptible to smells, so at the moment there is no way I can wear. I have washed it countless times, it’s been hung outside for weeks now and I have soaked it in vinegar, all to no avail, the smell does not even seem to be fading. It’s made of a man made material.

Any suggestions?

We often get clothes with a “charity shop smell” (which isn’t a bad smell, per se, just an overly-perfumed one) but one wash usually sorts them out, so I don’t know what to suggest on this lingering aroma. I suspect the answer may be to use bicarb of soda since that’s great at absorbing smells but I don’t know how that would be applied… Anyone know?

Any other ideas?