Proof that great minds think alike. An email from Lisa Chown:

We are a manufacturer of knitted acrylic accessories and end up having loads of waste fabric, from the shaping of our products, is there a way that this can be recycled rather than send it to the landfill?

And another one the next day from Katrina:

How can I recycle all the fabric remnants I have lying around?? When I worked in an Interior Design shop in London, I know a charity would come and pick up the fabric waste for recycling. I don’t know who to contact…does anyone have any ideas??

And I also did some sewing on Monday night and had some tiny scraps left over and thought the same thing.

So any ideas? Fabric recycling ideas would be best for Lisa and Katrina since I suspect they’ll have more than can be reused – but what about reuse suggestions for people like me? The scraps I produced were too small to be used on other projects (even patchwork/quilting) – but I guess they could be used for stuffing or things like that… right?

(Photo by CraigPJ)

An email from Leah:

We recently did a buy five bottles get a sixth free thing at our local supermarket but two out of the four reds we’ve opened so far have been awful, undrinkable because they’re so tart and vinegary.

We’re dubious about the other two bottles now but don’t want to waste them – or the two practically full bottles that we tried and hated. Are there any other uses for wine aside from getting sloshed or using it in food?

If they were white wine, I’d maybe suggest keeping them on hand to clean up red wine spills – since that’s supposed to work – but I’m not sure about red. Dying fabric maybe?

Anyone else got any suggestions?

(Photo by woodsy)

We had shower curtain rings a few weeks ago but what about the curtains themselves?

Our shower curtain is getting a bit passed it – it’s torn at some of the ring points, there is something that looks like hair dye along the bottom (even though neither of us dye our hair but whatever, it won’t come off) and mildew has well and truly taken over. We clean off the black mould regularly but the times between scrubbing it clean seems to be getting shorter and shorter – we think the slightly rough fabric is to blame.

Anyway, we’re going to look out for a new one – or get one of those solid screen things since they’re easier to clean. But what can we do with the old one?

Especially, any ideas that can make use of the fact most curtains have a fun or pretty pattern on them?

(Photo by danzo08)

We’ve had an email from Sue, asking:

What can I do with spare saucepan lids? I’ve just cleaned out my cupboard and I’ve got loads of old ones that don’t match any of my current pans – some of them are probably older than my teenage children!

Well, firstly Sue, you can give them to me! We’ve only got one lid so have to juggle it around if we’re cooking multiple items that need lids. There are probably a large number of people in a similar position so you could probably Freecycle them in your local area. Lids are great for making cooking more efficient – saves all that excess heat escaping into the kitchen – and recycling them between people that need them means it better for the environment on two counts.

But aside from that, any other suggestions?

As I might have mentioned before, John and I write a geeky webcomic together and we sell geeky t-shirts based on jokes from the strip. We decided we’d only sell the tshirts if we could do it right and were lucky enough to find a printing company with a good ethical & environmental policy. We also send the shirts out in recycled envelopes or (for more orders of multiple shirts) in brown paper parcels because those one-off plastic posting bag things seem excessively wasteful.

We hope that our wonderful tshirt buyers recycle or compost the paper or envelopes but I thought it couldn’t hurt to come up with a few more reuse suggestions. We’ve already covered envelopes so anything specific that brown paper is good for?

Jack and Jill used it, along with vinegar, to fix his head but away from the world of nursery rhymes, what else could it be used for?

(Photo by lusi)