Because we so often get caught up doing other things (and/or are lazy), John and I have take-out about once a week. Sometimes this is pizza, as I’ve mentioned before, but recently we discovered a new Chinese place open up nearby and we have been partaking in its various offerings.

Long gone are the days of foil tubs and cardboard tops – everyone in the take-out world seems to use microwaveable plastic lidded containers these days. While I have worries about storing food in plastic for any length of time, we kept the first few rounds of tubs to use for leftovers from our own culinary exploits and the like. But now we have more tubs & lids than we know what to do with – we have more than enough for use in the kitchen and around the house – and storage is getting to be a problem.

We can’t doorstep-recycle them because they’re Polypropylene (type 5) and our council only recycles types 1, 2 and 4 (as seems standard) – and I don’t know anywhere else that recycles them. I doubt the take-out places could take them back for their re-use for hygiene reasons – and ditto anywhere else that might find them useful but lacks sterilising equipment.

So any suggestions? Recycling ideas or uses outside the normal ones around the home (food tubs in the kitchen; nuts/bolts/screws in the cellar; under plants..)?

I’ve had an email from Andrew Urban:

I have something that needs to be recycle and actually is recyclable but maybe companies will charge a lot to take them.

We have considered using a wood chipper to chop them into smaller pieces and then send them to a landfill but that will only solve our waste issue not our recycling issue.

This is probably on a lot bigger scale than most of the commenters on this site usually think about but if anyone’s got any ideas at all, post a comment below and maybe Andrew and his company will be able to scale it up and save all that landfill space.

We went for a walk in a local wood the other weekend and while we were walking around, I saw one of those plastic things that holds together four packs of (usually drink) cans.

It was still intact so I picked it up to tear it apart (none of the non-existent deers that are supposed to live in that wood would be choke on it on my watch) but as I did so, it made me wonder whether those seagulls-killers have any possible reuses.

Any suggestions?

(Photo by celiece)

As previous posts may have indicated, I have rather a sweet tooth and from time to time, treat myself with cake or biscuit related products.

When we buy them, we don’t fool around and usually get full sized cakes or at least loaf-shaped ones but sometimes we get fiddly, little individual ones like this pack of Viennese Swirls. Mmm, swirly.

The Swirls came in a cardboard box then inside that, nestled in a formed plastic nest. The plastic is really thin and flimsy but still… Any suggestions?

I know most water cooler bottles already go back to the supplier for reuse or recycling (she says, hopefully) but what about ideas for those ones that get lost along the way?

John rescued one from a skip near his work the other day and brought it home thinking we could use it as a cloche or something in the garden – but since we already have lots of drinks bottles set aside for that purpose, I’m trying to think of something else to do with it instead.

The plastic is so solid it seems a shame to cut it up but there isn’t a lid so I can’t think what we would bottle in it.

Any suggestions?