We’ve had an email from Bob:

I have lots of tea light candles…metal container as I use a lot of them.

I love those little candles but I hate the waste they produce…so I’d love to get some help with reusing them =)

The ones I’ve seen tend to be thick aluminium foil so they could probably be recycled along with your other aluminium products – we can doorstep recycle them here.

But I hear you Bob: reusing rocks!

I’ve seen them used countless times as miniature ashtrays – but ones that are thrown away after use, so that’s not exactly much better than throwing them away in the first place.

So any suggestions?

(Photo by kix)

We’ve had an email from Gwyn:

Taking our tree down yesterday, we found 6 (six!) baubles were pretty much destroyed and only staying together through some sort of Christmas miracle and another 10 were fractured and set to go the same way. Bloomin’ cats!

They’re glass so I was thinking I could recycle them with our normal glass recycling but then my fella pointed out that they might not be the same type of glass and they’re all painted/varnished too.

Can we recycle them or not?

I’m not 100% sure but I suspect the answer is no because of the layer of paint – especially if the paint is some sort of acrylic matte stuff or is glittery. Anyone know for sure?

Depending on quite how smashed they are, you might be able to renovate some of them to make a feature of the broken bits – perhaps poke a thin paintbrush through a hole and varnish the insides to hold the cracks together, then place a tiny decoration in there.

Failing that, wrap them in some newspaper (so bits of glass don’t fly everywhere) and smash them up into smaller pieces, then use them to do a mosiac design on, say, a photo frame or something.

Any other reuse suggestions – other than getting baubles that bounce in the future? ;)

(Photo by fishmonk)

We’ve had an email from Josh:

Hi, I’ve got one for you, playing cards. I play a lot of poker with my buddies and our cards get bashed up pretty quickly, the edges bent over primarily so we can’t play with them anymore. They’re plastic (?) coated so can’t be recycled with cardboard, right?

Just because you can’t play with them any more though doesn’t mean that they’re at the end of their useful life.

Yes, you’re right that they can’t be recycled as paper if they’re plastic coated – but they’d make fun bookmarks, the non-face cards could be used for shopping lists and if some still have strong edges, you could drag them between keyboard keys to pull out the stupid amount of cat hair and sesame seeds collected in the gaps (maybe that’s just my keyboard).

Any other reuses?

They can also be included in a number of crafts/decoration projects – for example, they could cheer up dull storage boxes, and could also be used as a fun way to differentiate the boxes or label them if they need to be in sequence. Some brilliant people have turned them into business card wallets, MP3 players/iPod cases, or even a fantastic bag. They can also be used for any type of small scale papercrafts that require a light card.

Any other suggestions on what to make from them?
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Here we are, again: New Year’s Eve.

The supermarket at the edge of our estate is selling giant packs of party poppers for 80p so come tomorrow, some households (and probably entire streets) will be covered in strings of paper and little empty plastic shells.

The obvious answer is not to get them in the first place but assuming they’ve already been popped, what are the options?

The paper is usually none too fancy – not glossy or heavily printed – so can go in the compost, or if you’ve got a lot of it, could be used as packaging for small items.

The plastic bits though – essentially a small cup with a (holed) stem at the bottom of it – aren’t quite so easily reusable. I mean, aside from fun hats for finger puppets. Can you think of anything else you could reuse them for?

Aside from that, do all have a wonderful New Year’s Eve and all the best for 2009. Oooh, and stay tuned for a vaguely Recycle This related announcement tomorrow :)

(Hey, sorry for not posting anything on Friday. I don’t celebrate Christmas so should have posted really but then we stayed up shockingly late playing video games on Thursday night because everyone was off work and I didn’t wake up until Friday afternoon :) )

We’ve had an email from Maya – which reminded me of an email Agata sent me a few weeks ago but which got buried in my email inbox for some reason – asking about reusing dolls’ furniture.

Maya says she has “loads of old doll furniture, mostly from Barbie sets. I don’t have a clue what can I do with them.”

Well, the obvious thing is, if they’re still in ok-to-good condition, to give them away, either to charity shops or through Freecycle – let someone else use them for their intended purpose.

It might also be worth checking eBay in case you’ve got an item that collectors want.

But assuming that’s not an option – say if they’re broken or damaged – what else can be done with them? Any crafty ways to repurpose them?

I’ve seen small dolls’ house kitchen items and the like made into jewellery – kitsch earrings, brooches or pendants – and I imagine something like a dining room table could be used as a podium type thing on a shelf to give a second layer for small items, and armchairs could become phone/ipod rests. Any other suggestions?

(Oh, and if case you’re interested, we covered the dolls themselves just about a year ago.)

(Stock photo by Carin)