We’ve had an email from Fiona, saying:

We eat a lot of dried fruit, nuts and seeds and, when we’re in a jam/marmalade/chutney making mood, a lot of sugar too. Which means we have a lot of empty plastic food bags.

Would love to know how to re-use or recycle these.

I would love to know how to re-use or recycle them too – I suspect those type of bags make up the bulk of our to-landfill waste at the moment.

I saw some storage boxes/baskets made from old chocolate bar wrappers at a cool hippy shop the other week and I’m thinking of giving that a go with these type of bags and other wrappers once I finished The Great Can Weaving Project of 2008 (don’t ask) – I’ll post on how that turns out if/when it turns out.

But what about other ideas?

(Photo by sritenou – and if you’re interested in pistachios, check out the post that started this whole website nearly two years ago :) )

I spent most of yesterday afternoon in the garden with a few of the neighbourhood children because one of the girls got it in her head that she wanted to dig over our veg plot ahead of this year’s planting and I’m a firm believer in exploiting child labour at every opportunity.

Since we’ve all been pretty much in hibernation over the winter, it’s the first time I’ve seen them in a while and it reminded me about something her dad made last year. He’d got the metal chassis of an old pull-along trailer and rebuilt the rest of the trailer out of scrap wood etc. Over the random spare tyres, he had some natty wheel arches and he asked us to guess how we thought he’d made them – we guessed scrap wheel arches from something else – but as the title of this post might suggest, they were in fact an old plastic dog bed cut in two and spray painted to match the rest of the trailer. They really looked the part and as a bonus, didn’t add any extra weight to the trailer either. I thought it was a pretty great re-use and kept meaning to post it on here but forgot until now.

So that’s one idea – but probably not one most people would use – so any other suggestions?

A few weeks ago, we had to pick up John’s car from the garage after a service/MOT and while we were breathing in lungfuls of carbon monoxide waiting for the mechanic to finalise all the paperwork, I found myself staring at a big box of used disposable gloves near the counter. I don’t know how long the pile had been accumulating but there was a scary amount of them apparently just about to go in the bin.

Once I got back into the open air and my head stopped swimming from all the fumes, my first thought was “how could I recycle or reuse them?”.

I’ve only used latex gloves once – to provide grip when removing my now defunct tongue piercings – and I don’t think I’d have liked to have used dirty ones for that — but my tongue piercing fondling ones were clean after use and have been kept in the cleaning cupboard if we need them for any dirty jobs.

I guess there will be some overlap with rubber gloves – but the thinner Latex may restrict – or inspire – other uses.

So suggestions?

(Photo by Capgros)

We’ve had an email from Mary asking about recycling hollow core doors.

I always see doors of one sort or another in skips around here but Mary has come up with an idea for an old one of hers – but needs a little help:

I would like to make a rattan or seagrass headboard for my king size bed by covering an old hollow core door, maybe I can use old matchstick blinds, or I’ll buy some mats, any ideas? I’d also need some kind of edging.

I really like big headboards like that so it sounds like a great idea. Mats would probably be a bit more flexible and may bend around edges – eliminating the need for separate edging – but I do like the idea of “bamboo” blinds – it seems like it would be less rough to lean against.

Any help for Mary?

Or any other ideas about what could be done with an old hollow door?

We’ve had an email from Heather:

I have old ripped worn tablecloths and runners and such and I would like to know how to recycle them or donate them. They are not in good condition to donate to the goodwill or such, but don’t want to just throw them into an already overfilled landfill.

I was hoping to find something besides “use them for crafts”, so whatever you can come up with please help!!!

Heh, crafts would be the obvious answer of course – I quite often buy ugly-cool old tableclothes from charity shops for quilting or whatever.

But non-craft ideas… Cleaning rags? Protective packaging around parcels? Pretty drawer liners?

If you don’t want to do anything with them, many council/municipal waste collection sites (and bigger recycling stations) have fabric bins where the textile fibres are collected for reclamation and reuse.

Any other suggestions? Non-craft ones for Heather – but feel free to leave crafty suggestions for those more inclined to that sort of thing.

(Photo by ngould)