Jami has asked what can be done with “broken bike helmets”.

Like children’s car seats, hardshell bike helmets have to be retired after a bump in case they’ve been damaged structurally and so might not be as protective at the critical moment.

Like hard hats, I bet they’d made fun hanging baskets – or even used for something like growing tomatoes upside down.

Any other suggestions?

Other bike related Recycle This queries

• How can I reuse or recycle a bike saddle?
• How can I reuse or recycle a bicycle inner tubes?
• How can I reuse or recycle a crooked bicycle wheel?

(Photo by charlotel)

The Eternal*Voyageur is back again, asking:

Any ideas on how to reuse children’s drawings ? My daughter brings a bunch of them from pre-school every day. I don’t have the heart to throw them away, and I can display only so many!

I feel the same way about anything we make/draw/paint too – and we’re nowhere near as precious as children :)

If they can’t be displayed but you’d like to keep them, how about making them into books? A hole punch (and maybe some of those reinforcer stickers), some pretty string and maybe some old cardboard decorated for covers would do for the most basic version. Keeping every picture is still going to leave you with a hefty pile but at least they’ll be easier to store – and easier to enjoy in the future.

Anyone else got other storage or reuse ideas?

John was restringing his ukulele (not a euphemism) the other day when he flung the old strings at me, saying “how can I recycle this?” It was a good question ;)

We’ve covered metal guitar strings on the site before but not their nylon counterparts. A lot of the suggestions for the metal ones were jewellery related and I guess that would work here – the thinner ones will be perfect for covering with beads.

Also, like everything else even vaguely string-related in the house, one of the strings immediately became a cat toy – John tied a metal hoop to one end that, as far as the cats were concerned, then jiggled about of its own accord. OMG! HAUNTED HOOP! KILL! KILL! KILL!

Any other suggestions? We get four strings every time John changed them and we know loads of other people who play the uke too so it would be great to reuse them all up.

(By the way, John and I started a fun, silly project late last year, singing Wikipedia articles accompanied by a ukelele: Ukepedia. We’ve not had time to record all the ones we’ve come up with but a few of our friends have – the “Bedfordshire Clanger” and “List of WCW Hardcore Champions” videos are my favourites :) )

We’ve had an email from Marsha asking:

where or how to you recycle old bowling balls? They are petrol based. estimates of at least 100,000 are just put in land fills. thanks

Ooh, good question.

If they’re still in good condition, I’d offer them on Freecycle or to the local bowling alley – if they can’t use them because all theirs need to be a particular brand or whatever, they might know a customer who could use them.

If they’re cracked or what not, I’d still be tempted to offer them on Freecycle – for people wanting them for a fun decoration (a GIANT paperweight perhaps ;) ) or for a craft project.

Actual recycling will depend on exactly what type of plastic it is, for example, some balls are made out of urethane and that is cost-prohibitive to recycle – so it’ll probably be easier to think of good reuses than get the plastic back into the system.

So reuse suggestions?

(Photo by bas3ssen)

We’ve had an email from Flannery, saying:

i would like to suggest : pointe shoes.
i have ten trillion old ones and they’re just hanging around

We’ve already covered shoes in general, Crocs and high-heeled shoes – so there maybe some suggests that’ll apply to these shoes too.

Flannery’s “ten trillion” of them suggests they’ve been worn as much as they can/should be so giving them to, say, beginners or other dancers might not be an option. I suspect like with high-heels and other “pretty” shoes though, they might lend themselves to crafts, especially if they’re “shabby chic” slightly scruffy rather than completely trashed. A display like the one in the picture might be a wonderful decoration for a dancer, former dancer or ballet-fan’s house.

Any particular suggestions or other ideas?

(Photo by crisderaud)