A neighbour is throwing out some old seagrass mats. They’re about 6ft long (2m) by 4ft wide (120cm) but are water/mud damaged up the entire length of one side.

They’re a basic horizontal weave – like really, really big bamboo placemats – so are quite flexible if you roll them with the weave, but hard to roll against it (if that makes sense).

Any suggestions about what could be done with them?

(I’m calling it seagrass matting because that’s what it looks like to me – if I’m wrong though, please let me know what it is.)

We’ve had an email from Rob Williams:

I collected silver foil/aluminium foil for a lady at work and she gave it to a charity. She has now retired and I still have a growing pile of foil. Does anyone know of a charity that wants this? I’m told it is a ‘valuable’ commodity.

Our doorstep recycling includes aluminium foil so it can easily be recycled – but as Rob asks, does anyone know of any charities that collect it?

And since we’re all about reusing, while we’re on the topic – any re-use suggestions?

(Related items: we’ve already covered foil pet food trays and foil chocolate/sweet/biscuit wrappers.)

(Photo by nlHarri)

We’ve had an email from Carine:

I have huge chopsticks left from those Chinese delivery, since we usually don’t use them… fork and knives do better !!!
So what can I do with them.

The first thing I would say would be to ask the take-out place to not include them with your order – reducing is always better than dealing with the waste afterwards. But that obviously doesn’t address the stack Carine already has.

We’re still using some plastic ones we got with a delivery a few years ago and I recently re-used some “disposable” bamboo ones to when creating a mini-greenhouse around a cutting – I put the cutting in an old clear plastic bag and used the chopsticks to keep the bag away from the cutting.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by Penny Matthews)

I’ve recently started drinking mixer type drinks in pubs – lime and lemonade, that sort of thing – and because of the heavy cordial involved, I usually get a stirrer or straw in my glass.

I also know a lot of cafés and coffee shops still use plastic stirrers rather than spoons for take-out drinks. So what can be done with them?

The pub ones are usually pretty sturdy plastic – and can be cute like the one in the photo – whereas the hot drinks one tend to be flimsy. Suggestions for either?

At any one time, there are at least two or three crisp (potato chips) packets blowing around our street, invariably ending up in our garden or making “fffffwhpp” sounds as they rattle against the railings at the end of the road.

I remember making shrinky-dinks out of them when I was a kid but aside from that, I can’t think of any other ideas about what can be done with them. (And I don’t even know whether you can do that with the foil lined packets kicking around now.)

So is anyone else more inspired about what can be done with them? Suggestions for big “family size” packets as well as standard ones are welcome.

(And in case anyone else other than me is interested, this is the 250th post on here – that’s a whole lot of reusing and recycling ideas! I’m think I’m going to celebrate with some salty potato snacks!)

(Photo by monomatt)