We’ve had an email from Andrea:

Sometimes I buy assortment packs of adhesive bandages (we call them Band Aids whether they’re Band Aid brand or not) and when I’m through with all the regular ones I’m left with the small round spot ones. I haven’t figured out why that size and shape exists to begin with.

Is there any use for them?

My guess would be that they’re for people who have to inject themselves regularly but since I have a complete and utter needle phobia, I’ve got a pile of them here too. I’ve recently started buying own brand plasters that are just different rectangle shapes but have a number of random shaped ones left over from previous boxes – those little circle ones, and the (for want of a better description) butterfly shaped ones particularly.

So any suggestions for alternative uses?

(Photo of a standard shaped plaster by monique72)

We’ve had an email from Katy Duvall:

I was cleaning out my cupboards yesterday and found forgotten nearly full bottle of soy sauce. It was so forgotten about that it went out of date nearly two years ago! My boyf thinks we should just bin it but it’s such a big bottle that I’d rather not. Any ideas?

I’m always skeptical of dates on condiments – or rather I forget to check them and find we’ve been using the same jar of mustard for about three years – so if it looked ok, I’d be tempted to use it anyway – but any other suggestions?

I wonder if dark soy can be used for dyeing/staining purposes… At the moment, I can only think of using it to “antique” paper for making ye olde treasure maps but I wonder if it can be used on wood or the like too. Anyone know?

We’ve looked a little toilet tubes and giant big tubes in the past but what about ones more in the middle of the size range?

I got sent a (freebie promotional) tshirt from the US a couple of weeks ago and for some reason they decided to send it in a solid cardboard poster tube instead of an envelope or postal bag.

Said tube has sat around the living room ever since with a “how can I be reused?” question mark hanging over its head. It’s a solid cardboard tube, about 50cm long (20″) with plastic caps at each end (one of them with a lip to make it easy to take out).

Now, thanks to one of our friend’s newly-discovered love of expensive whisky, it’s also now been joined by a similar whisky bottle tube – slightly lighter cardboard but similar plastic caps.

I’ve kept them to this point for reuse if I need to send anything small poster-ish through the post but that’s quite unlikely – so any other suggestions?

We’ve already looked at reuse ideas for old fashioned lightbulbs but what about recycling for the supposedly greener variety?

A friend of ours, Denyerec, has prodded me a couple of times about recycling energy saving light bulbs and tubes because he’s got a growing pile of them:

I have a fear that the energy saving madness is going to be offset by the environmental damage caused by inevitably casually discarded tubes.

Whenever we’re chatting about it, another friend always points out that they have to be disposed of carefully because of the mercury in all compact fluorescent lamps – but none of us have any particular idea of how to go about doing this.

Any ideas?

(Photo by vranarc)

I use plastic disposable razors. I admit it but I’m not happy about it.

I don’t use them that much – just for my armpits say, once a week (since I’m not that hairy and/or bothered) – but it still seems incredibly wasteful.

I’ve tried using ones where you just replace the blade – but they always go rusty really quickly and so work out really expensive for the amount I use them – and I have a rechargeable electric razor for my legs – but that doesn’t work well on my pits for some reason – so I’m left with the disposable ones. Boo.

Any suggestions for reuses or ways to recycle them? Or other ideas?

(Photo by chris2k)