A bit of a weird one but we’ve opened up an old, long closed chimney recently and now have bags and bags of old soot. At the moment, it’s earmarked as filler where we’re levelling up a drastically sloped bit of the garden – all the rubble and stuff we’re generating at the moment will go in there as misc filler – but I wonder if there is anything else that can be done with it instead of just being bulk.

Ash from fires can be put on compost heaps or beds as a fertiliser (albeit a rather alkaline one) and soot apparently can be used in a similar way but is best if left to “weather” for about a year. As well as being a fertiliser, it’s apparently a deterrent for slugs. (Ours has, presumably, been weathering in the chimney for 30+ years so I’ll keep some of it aside for that.)

Any other garden or household reuses for it? Any better alternatives to being misc filler?

(Apologies for the downtime yesterday – our hosting provider had a huge hardware failure. As I also work for our hosting provider, I was stressed from both sides – not a good day!)

We’ve had an email from Jo:

Hi. Got a question for you. Is it better to buy pop in big bottles or cans from a packaging point of view? Big bottles seem like less waste for the amount of liquid but are plastic. Your thoughts?

Neither are great for a number of reasons. Aside from the actual waste from the packaging, it’s really resource-intensive to ship around liquid in anything other than pipes – and the production tends to be pretty bad for the environment too, let’s not forget about the production.

But to the question in hand, both the plastic and metal are non-renewable resources, the creation of which is very destructive to the environment, but both can be recycled and are widely collected. If though, you can only recycle one or the other in your local area, that might sway you one way or the other.

The easiest way to reduce the waste is, of course, to reduce consumption of the drinks in the first place. Or make them at home – either getting the fizz through a natural process (like making homemade ginger beer) or a less natural one.

I usually prefer bottles – we don’t drink much fizzy stuff at all and when we do have it, prefer little amounts rather than full cans – and even though we no longer have doorstep recycling of plastics, plastic bottles have more reuses around the home and garden.

Anyone else got any input? What about suggestions for reducing the amount of fizzy drinks drunk – what are similar but better alternatives?

• dancingfarmer over at Not Dabbling In Normal pulled together a comprehensive list of ways to make starter pots for seedlings out of newspaper – different methods to suit different uses. (The dancing one has also written a great article on how we often kid ourselves about how much time our “convenient” lifestyles save us and also how what at first seems overwhelmingly difficult and time-consuming, can quickly become internalised and easy peasy.)
• Crafty Nest featured a cute tote bag tutorial last week – made using old tank tops/vest tops. Two different methods are used, drawing on the style of two different tops.
• It’s a few weeks ago now but Kate over at Living the Frugal Life wrote a great article about alternatives for feeding chickens – using what the land provides rather than just using always store bought food.
• Dollar Store Crafts linked to this fab necklace made from pennies – I like the idea of making a holiday memories one with very low value (so not worth changing) coins from a trip.
• And Junk Jewelry‘s Jane has added to her list of other junk jewellers – her list now totals 53 – lots of ideas for reusing and recycling lots of things to make fun and interesting jewellery.

I guess this is more of a straight “reuse” and less of a “recycle” than normal but it’s Monday morning and I’m tired, and I can’t think of anything else ;)

We had a ham the other day and it was the fattiest piece of meat I think I’ve ever seen. There were inches of the stuff.

I usually keep the bone and use it to make a stock/soup but the fat would completely overwhelm said stock or soup. There are some suggestions here for rendering it and some recipes to use it in too – anyone done anything like that or got any other suggestions?

Also, what do you use ham bones for? The stock doesn’t seem to me that it’s as versatile as vegetable stock or chicken stock because it’s pretty strongly flavoured in its own right. I’ve used it, with chunks of the ham, to make ham-centred soups (mmm, hearty ham & bean) and the bone itself in the pot with rice while cooking at add a bit of flavour. What do you do with them?

Do they have a name? Those plastic pocket things used in ring binders or lever arch files, for paper you don’t want to or can’t hole punch? If there is a name, I don’t know it, which makes it might hard to find a photo of them ;) UPDATE: Jack sent over a photo for me to use – thanks Jack!

Anyway, they’re great for reusing for their original purpose time and time again until you overfill them one time and the hole reinforcement strip tears/pulls out and from then on, it constantly, annoyingly, falls out of the folder every time you lift it up.

What can be done with the rest of the plastic then? It’s usually smooth, flat and clear – there must be some practical and crafty reuses for something like that.

They’re usually made from polypropylene apparently (plastic code number 5) which can be recycled but isn’t collected as standard in all places. So how can they be reused instead?