I realise yesterday’s post on aerosols would be mostly recycling rather than reuse, but how about a similar item that has more reuse potential – pump action sprays?

We’ve got a number of old pump action spray bottles around the house – from old cleaning products and from a body spray that I use from time to time – and they can all be refilled and reused, but we’ve used up all our ideas about what to put in them and still have a stack of spares.

So any suggestions what would be useful to have as a spray/mister that doesn’t already coming with its own pump spray?

I suspect this is going to be more of recycle one than a reuse one – but if I’m wrong, suggestions on both are most welcome.

Since we’re not big consumers of aerosol-driven personal hygiene/hair products, we don’t have that many of them – the ones we do have are from specific cleaning products (namely, at this time of the year, household flea sprays – two of the cats have quite bad flea reactions so we have to go a bit OTT on the extermination front to stop them from getting all bitten to shreds, even after they’ve been treated themselves).

So what can we do with the aerosol cans ones we’re done? Can they be recycled?

(Photo by cinezi)

I know digital cameras are usurping their existence now but we’ve still got a large number of these little pots lying around the house.

I also vaguely remember that these little items were subjected to months of discussion on the Guardian letters page a year or so ago – but I can’t remember any of the suggestions other than using them for salt and pepper for camping trips.

So can anyone else remember any of the suggestions or does you have wonderful ideas of your own?

(Original photo by Underdog80)

I’ve had an email from Jory, asking for suggestion about what to do with “a ton of old house keys”.

We’ve got a number floating around too – not just house keys but old bike lock keys and other misc keys that are probably for something really important we just don’t know what.

So any ideas?

(Photo by irizarry)

I’ve had an email from Nnicdic saying

how can i recycle speakers they work but are unwanted?

Because they work, I would automatically suggest trying your local Freecycle group as chances are, someone will be able to use them for their intended purpose.

But for this site, lets assume that they don’t work – anyone got any ideas of how broken speakers (or any of their component parts) could be reused?

(Photo by potatosoup, mmm soup)