I can’t stand anything in my ears but I have a few friends who love their music delivered right to their ear drums.

For one reason or another, they go through headphones like billy-o. Sometimes the wires break or get damaged and sometimes it’s one or other of the ear pieces that goes – and given the amount of people using iPods and the like these days, thousands of pairs of broken headphones must end up on the rubbish tip each week.

So any suggestions for ways to recycle or reuse them? Is cannibalisation possible – taking working bits from a couple of pairs and sticking them together? And what about preventative measures to stop them breaking in the first place?

(Photo by ravuri_rp)

My brother and I got our first proper PC in the mid-1990s.

We could do word processing on it, basic drawing and DTP – lots of serious grown-up stuff that justified it as a (second-hand) purchase to our parents … but we still mostly used it for playing games.

Our favourite game, for a long while, was a pinball game which used the ALT keys to work the flippers. Before long, the worn out ALT keys fell off. So we changed the game’s controls to use the CTRL keys instead. And ditto. And so on, until we rendered our first computer keyboard pretty much useless.

I don’t go in for such abusive gaming these days but as we live on our computers now, (my boyfriend) John and I still end up with broken keyboards from time to time, or just spare ones when one comes free with a new computer or something.

When they’re still in working order, we give them away to friends or family in need, or the local computer recycling place, but any suggestions of what we can do with broken ones, or their parts? Any recycling/upcycling ideas?

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I’ve recently been clearing out loads of old stuff from my obsessive teen fandom of a certain, ahem, fluffy-haired band. Ebay is currently in the process of loving me because I’m halfway there, selling my previously collected tshirts, vinyl and assorted memorabilia. (Some might even say, I’m living on a prayer with all the proceeds.)

Given my obsession started before I got a cd player in my bedroom, I bought all their early albums on cassette tapes and just about stretched them to breaking point with repeat playing. While the vinyl has lasted – and sold – well, I fear the cassette tapes are beyond the point of passing them on to someone else.

So what else can I do with them? Is the tape reusable? And if so, any ideas?

(Photo by tijmen)

No, no, not the things that run around causing women to stand on chairs and scream in 1960s sitcoms (to paraphrase Douglas Adams), but the computer ones.

From our transistions through the various ages of mice, we’ve got a number of old filthy-rollered mice lying in cupboards around the place. As I mentioned on the old mouse mats post, we usually use track pads these days or optical mice if we need anything a bit more precise, so those old clogged up ones are just going to waste.

Any ideas? For either the whole mouse or any of its parts?

(Photo by weirdvis)

A few years ago, when everyone and their auntie was trying their luck during the ISP goldrush, we couldn’t open the front door for the amount of AOL cds coming through the letter box each morning.

Thankfully, it’s all slackened off a bit now but we still have stacks of old CDs to get rid of: data ones that have burnt wrong, ones that have been scratched and, on the rare occasion we still get them, those damn AOL-et-al cds.

The myriad of coasters we already own (3 different sets, 4 in each set) far exceeds the amount of coasters we use on a day-to-day basis (zero), so employing CDs to do the job – which is often the suggestion – isn’t really going to be that useful to us.

So any other ideas? What other uses are there for them?
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