Envelopes? Easy peasy, a million reuses. Padded envelopes have plenty of reuses too. But what about plastic mailing bags? They seem to be the default choice these days for sending out fabric or clothing because they’re stronger/less likely to tear than paper envelopes or brown paper but also lighter so cheaper to mail.

If they’re neatly opened with scissors near the original seal, they can be reused as a slightly smaller mailing bag. Or you can use them instead of bin liners in small waste bins, or cut them into strips to make plastic “yarn” for repurposing projects.

They’re usually made from polythene, the same material as most plastic carrier bags, so can be recycled in the same places as those but you know me, I prefer to reuse than just recycle.

What else can we do with them?

As I mentioned the other week, we currently doing some work on our new house before moving in – the stuff that is far, far easier to do when the house is empty.

One of the biggest jobs has been taking down a 1970s style cemented-up crazy-paving stone wall in the dining room – it made the room look like a tiny dark cave. We’ve kept the better condition stones for using in the paved bit of the garden and the rest will form the foundation under where our chickens will live.

For some reason though, someone, at some point, thought it would be a great idea to put loads of pipes behind and embedded in the cement and actually across the open hole of the fireplace so we’ve had to have them moved around into more sensible places. The old pipes have now been removed and are lying in small sections in the garden.

They look like copper pipes so they *might* clean up and there *might* be enough of them to make something like this wonderful copper pipe pan rack. I also could keep the pipes and try using them to protect my veggies next year – there seems to be some disagreement about whether or not copper at the border keeps slugs out of raised beds but if it’s there and not doing anything else, it might be worth a try.

What else could I do with the bits though? I realise there is a high value to scrap copper and the like at the moment but I would rather reuse it around the home/garden instead of selling it for scrap, have it shipped off halfway around the world then brought back to again, so we can buy it again in another shape.

So any suggestions?

We’ve had another email from Louise:

I wear specs and get prescription lenses for my sunglasses. I now have several original ‘lenses’ from sunglasses, which have been replaced with the prescription ones I need. Is there a charity that could use them? They all have UV filters and come from pricey glasses so should be of a good quality. It would be a shame to throw them out and for me they’re just useless clutter.

Even charities who collect prescription spectacles for redistribution overseas don’t collect loose prescription lens so unfortunately I doubt anyone will collect non-prescription ones. I would love to be wrong though – anyone know of any charities collecting them?

And what about complete sunglasses which are no longer required? Do any charities/organisations collect those for redistribution?

What about reuses? If the lenses are quite small, they might make giant but interesting earrings; if they’re really big round ones, they could be the start of a great bug halloween costume :)

Any other suggestions?

As I mentioned last week, we’ve finally, FINALLY, got the keys to our new house and are frantically doing some essential works before we can move in. One not quite essential but desirable thing is for us to fence in the wild bit of the garden – ultimately so we can have chickens* and use the fences to grow things up/along.

One side of the garden was previously dry stone walled but a lot of the stones have been pilfered for use elsewhere in the garden – we’ll try to reconstruct as much of it as we can but I think we’ll have build some sort of fencing for the rest.

John’s dad has suggested using wood from pallets to make simple horizontal-slatted fences. There is also the option of live fencing – growing some sort of hedgerow or bramble bush – but that’ll take time to grow in.

So any suggestions? Having a garden needing this sort of work is new to me so any ideas would be gratefully received!

* the chickens will need pretty high fences or a covered run. We haven’t quite decided what we’ll do with that yet but we’ll try to future-proof the new fences so we can add to them in the future.

(Photo by betacam)

Victoria, the ska-core princess who makes fun jewellery out of buttons, wire and the like, has left us a question on our Suggest-An-Item page:

Any ideas for recycling use glow sticks?
The type you might get at raves and festivals with the non-toxic chemicals that create a reaction when the stick is ’snapped’.
*high five*

*high five* back to you ;)

While there is an obvious potential case for reduction in their use at festivals etc, according to the very detailed Wikipedia article on them, there are a lot of practical uses too because they’re a waterproof light source that doesn’t require electricity or create sparks, so even if every raver gave them up, they’d still be plenty hanging around.

I suspect actually recycling them will be difficult because of the chemical mix but anyone know more about them?

As for reuses, apparently “dyes used in glow sticks usually exhibit fluorescence when exposed to ultraviolet radiation. Therefore even a spent glow stick will shine under a black light” – perhaps they could be used to make art or as guide lines on walls etc in places with UV lighting?

Any other suggestions?