We’ve had an email from Victoria, saying:

My grandfather has moved out of the house and left a very large collection of used razor blades. For what reason he never seemed to throw them out and just let them pile up in a bathroom cabinet. Can this item be recycled?

I’m presuming Victoria means safety razor type blades – not fully disposable razors or straight blades.

If they’re just metal (without plastic casing) then I suspect they can be recycled in the same way as other steel (most household waste sites have special containers for scrap metal) but what about reuses?

(Photo by iannai)

Deodorant bottles were one of the first things we featured on the site but Julie has a bit of a spin on that suggestions:

Could you help me with what I could possibly do with toiletries such as deodorant, body lotion that have either not been used or of they have only once. These have either irritated the skin or just don’t like them now.

It seems such a waste to throw them away, so I would welcome any ideas of organisations that might benefit from them.

I’ve had the irritating the skin problem with some deodorants too and now they’re sitting in the bathroom cupboard until the day I, I don’t know, develop leather-like lizard skin that can’t be irritated by anything in a roll-top bottle.

I suspect like with old cosmetics and unused but not required sanitary towels/tampons one answer might be a local women’s or homeless shelter – but any other suggestions?

I think I remember something about some body lotions being used as a moisturiser/softener on old leather but have no idea where I picked that up – anyone know either way?

We’ve had an email from Ashley Sue, asking:

What is a good sustainable use of 40 lb plastic empty kitty litter containers? I’ve got a bunch of them. not recyclable in our area :(

We get our cat litter in paper sacks so I’m not quite sure whether Ashley Sue means bucket-like tubs like this one or jug-style containers like these. The link on the former already give one potential re-use — for growing veg — and we’ve got a few of the latter type that originally held dry cat food which we use for other cat-related purposes – either mixing up two flavours of dry cat food to dilute one they don’t particularly like, for holding litter when the paper bag splits or if a bulk-bought sack of food/litter needs decanting so the smaller member of our household (ie me) can lift it. I’m sure a well-washed out litter jug could be used for all these things too.

Any other (cat or non-cat) suggestions though?

(Oh, and if you’re interested, we’ve already covered recycling/composting the litter itself. Also, can I just say how delighted I am that it’s spring and the cats are leaving the house for the first time in months – it’s been a long, long poopy winter.)

We’ve had an email from Lesley, asking:

Has anyone got any suggestions for re-using the “bladders” from the inside of wine boxes? Being both airtight and water-tight, there must be an alternative use for them.

Given the springing of spring this weekend and the fact it’ll probably be hard enough to get it clean (ie, un-wine sceneted) enough to re-use as a drinking liquid container, I’m tempted to come up with garden suggestions.

My first thought was for brewing a liquid fertiliser using nettles but then I realised, duh, you can’t really get nettles in that little neck hole so that wasn’t a particularly useful thought. Thanks there brain.

So any actually feasible suggestions for Lesley instead?

We’ve had another meta suggestion – this time from Kate:

How can I recycle a black plastic dustbin?

It’s true you shouldn’t bin a bin!

It is true! We’ve actually got two old bins in our garden – one pre-dating my move here that’s filled with soil and has herbs and ivy growing out of it (the latter pretty much hides the fact it’s a bin) while the other one (our pre-wheelie bin bin) is used for compost. It’s not as good as our proper compost bin – because there is no easy way to get the soil out again – but I consider it a long term overflow thing, to stop the other compost bin being filled up with things that take ages to rot. Before that, when we actually did DIY stuff on the house, it was used to hold bags of sand and cement because it was reasonably water tight.

Any more suggestions?

(Photo by dean)