I’ve just gone to use our loofah sponge (aka luffa/loofer) in the shower and noticed it was black with mould along one side. I thought I’d been really good and let it dry thoroughly after each use but I guess I’ve slipped up somewhere, it’s stayed soggy and the mould has taken advantage.

The thought of using something mouldy as a body scrubber doesn’t really appeal but obviously I’m not just going to throw it away. So what other options are there?

It’s a natural product (not a synthetic copy) so as a minimum, I could probably compost it – but I’d like to re-use it if possible. Any suggestions?

(Photo by Jerry Crimson Mann on WikiCommons)

We’ve had an email from Ciara Fletcher:

My colleagues at work gave me a beautiful bunch of flowers for my birthday but it seems to be wrapped in about 10 yards of cellophane!! What can I do with it? It’s mostly clear with a cute white flower design on it but I can’t think what to do with it because it’s so noisy!

If you grow flowers yourself, you could reuse it if you ever want to give a bunch to anyone else – but aside from that, I’m out of ideas. Any suggestions?

(Oh, and by the way Ciara, here are some suggestions for re-using the flowers when you’re done with them.)

(Photo from Ciara)

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 Peter Hughes asking simply:

How can I recycle memory sticks?

I’m presuming he means USB memory fobs and not the bits of strips of memory used inside computers – but when broken, the latter make fun keyrings for geeks.

I had an idea of incorporating a small USB stick into a necklace – as a pendant – or other jewellery but I intended these to be functional rather than just decorative.

So any suggestions on ways to recycle or reuse them if they’re broken?

(Photo by woodsy)

John and I went out for dinner the other day and someone on the next table to us was eating a big bowl of mussels.

After she’d finished her fishy starter, there was, of course, a big pile of shells left over – which naturally got my recycling juices going.

They’re not realistically compostable in most gardens because they’ll take so very long to break down and may attracted rodents in the meantime – so any suggestions for how they can be reused instead?

Are there any large scale recycling/reusing purposes for them that restaurants might be able to get involved with?

(Photo by lusi)