A couple of weeks ago on the “Suggest an Item” page, Fishcake_Random asked:

How can I recycle the little foil tins that mince pies and jam tarts come in??? I have a large stack this year and I just know they must have some amazing crafty type useage.

(Apologises that I’ve only picked it up a little late – after mince pie season has finished for another year…)

Foil tins can often be recycled alongside cans in metal recycling bins/kerbside – and sometimes (although less so now recycling is widely available) to raise money for charity.

Like foil cat food trays, they can be used as a mould for making soaps or for little tealight-shaped candles.

Any other suggestions?

I can’t believe we’ve not featured this already. We’ve covered stale bread, bread bag tags, how to make a bread bin recycling old stuff, and what to do with an old bread machine pan but not the bags that pre-sliced loaves come in.

Most pre-wrapped loaves (in the UK at least) come in LDPE bags – low-density polyethylene, ie, plastic number 4. They can be doorstep recycled in some places (check your local guidelines) and can be included with carrier bags at some collection spots.

But how can they be reused first? The most simple reuse is, of course, as a sandwich bag – but anything more interesting or creative?

(Photo by Richard George)

Over on Twitter, scrapiana asked/thought aloud:

Parmesan rinds. Why am I keeping them? Dim recollection that Jamie Oliver has some use for them. Must find out soon or they’re for the bin.

Apparently, like broccoli stalks, it’s one of those things that some people ALWAYS cook and they don’t understand why the rest of us don’t use them all the time. What do you use them for? Away from the dinner plate, would they be ok to add to a bird feeder fat mix, or would they be too salty?

Away from parmesan, the biggest thing holding me back is when the rind feels a little fabric-y, like the cheesecloth is part of the rind. I presume – possibly wrongly – that that sort of rind isn’t edible – so what else can be done with it?

It’s been snowy here for three weeks now and we’re making sure there is always a stock of seeds & nuts available for our local wildlife population. We know that it can be dangerous feeding wildlife too regularly – they become reliant on you and “forget” to find their own food supply, which is a problem if you move away/go away – but for the time being, while their food supply is under a chilly blanket, we’re helping out.

I bought a bird feeder a couple of year ago – a simple wood/metal grill thing – and it was fine in our old house. Here though, the squirrels gnawed the wood and ripped a whole in the metal on Day 1, so I clearly need to make something sturdier. (I don’t mind feeding the squirrels, especially at the moment, but would rather they didn’t break stuff.)

We’ve got some offcuts of wood – small flat pieces of pine, salvaged from a joiner – which I could yoink from the stove’s wood pile and use to make a little box/tray with a roof (probably a hanging one, rather than a table because of the cats). There is always the simple milk bottle option or juice bottles too. Coming at it from another angle, coconut shells or hard gourd skins can be used for homemade fat feeders, and those that plan ahead purposely grow sunflowers during the summer to feed their feather friends during the winter.

Speaking of the actual food, don’t just resort to shop-bought seed mixes – Mrs Green from My Zero Waste has pulled together a great list of waste foods that can help the local wildlife.

How else can you make bird feeders reusing and recycling random stuff?

And what do you feed the birds once you’ve got your feeder in place?

Last week Junk Jewelry‘s Jane linked to a picture from this month’s Vogue in which hang tags – price tags – are deliberately kept on items as part of the overall look. Ok, it’s maybe a just-in-photo-shoots look rather than something you’d wear on the street but it still made me think about price tags.

Price tags on clothes from highstreet shops seem to be multiplying – one piece of card for the brand/sub-brand, one for the price, one for care instructions… True, most are card so widely recyclable but increasingly I’ve spotted fabric ones on brands attempting to make themselves look more upmarket – held on with a piece of string or ribbon, instead of those little plastic things. A lot of waste that’s just usually pulled off and thrown in the bin straight away.

Anyone got any suggestions for reuses – rather than just recycling – of the card ones? And what about the fabric ones?

(There is, of course, a reduce case here – stop buying excessively tagged highstreet clothes but even the charity shops I go to usually have a couple of big card tags on their garments now.)

(And speaking of highstreet shops and their wasteful antics, this story came to light last week but in case you’ve not seen it – H&M have admitted deliberately destroying brand new clothes rather than giving them to charity. Another attempt by big chains to discourage freegans/scavengers and resulting in more senseless waste. Sigh.)