We’ve had an email from Di:

Several brands of tea I buy come in little waxy paper packets with a foil lining. Do you know if this can go straight into the recycling bin?

I think it’ll be a no regarding the recycling bin. Mixed materials – such as paper & plastic, plastic & metal, and paper & foil – tend to be a bit of a nightmare when it comes to recycling — and waxed paper can also be problematic to recycle as well (apparently it can be recycled alongside tetrapak but not regular paper).

It might be worth contacting the manufacturers to see if they have any suggestions or have any method of recycling their offcuts – if they do, they might be able to take back packaging and recycle it at the same time.

Any suggestions for reuses?

We’ve had our first Reduce This email! Lindsey from SwirlyArts/Cuteable wrote:

I buy eco friendly washing powder but it always comes in tiny boxes unlike the bigger brands which come in huge boxes. I don’t want to start buying the ‘normal’ brands of washing powder with less packaging but am concerned that I am buying lots of the smaller boxes.

I know that Ecover do larger boxes of washing powder but I tend to buy the supermarket brand of eco friendly washing powder. The boxes do get recycled but I want to try and reduce the number of boxes I buy.

From my experience, big boxes of Ecover are difficult to find – it’s strange they don’t do refill like the do with liquid cleaning products… They can be ordered online though (I’ve seen places offering 10kg sacks) and depending where you get them from, it might be comparable in cost to supermarket brand products – but of course then you have to think about the delivery footprint…

Anyone got any suggestions or ideas?

(On the subject of washing powders, Ethical Consumer have reviewed a range of laundry detergents on the market in terms of their environmental impact – interesting reading.)

Three Beautiful Things‘ Clare sent over a link to a “grim but intriguing” story about someone making fashion items using old cigarette butts >> Cigarette Butt Haute Couture at Greenmuze.com.

When I clicked the link, I imagined it would be outfits along the lines of Herb Williams’ crayon sculptures but it seems to be more of a fabric reclamation project – which makes it considerably less grim in my opinion since fibre is fibre.

Obviously it would be better – for the environment and for the person’s health – if everyone reduced their consumption of them but in the meantime, is there anything else that can be done with them? Small scale reuse/recycle projects at home or are there any industrial recycling/reclaiming schemes?

(Sorry if the picture is making anyone else feel queasy btw!)

Last week’s Reverse This question – about how to make a rain chain using recycled materials – has kicked up another question: how to make a water butt/rain barrel using recycled, reclaimed and repurposed stuff.

If you’ve got a rainwater barrel, it means the rain chain doesn’t need to end up in an ugly drain and, of course, it also saves the precious rainwater for use around the garden or in grey water systems.

The specific requirements for the butt depend on what the water is being used for but most I’ve seen tend to be reasonably opaque (to reduce algae growth) and many, particularly commercially produced ones, include a tap or a hinged lid to make it easy to access the water.

Any suggestions? What have you seen being used by creative allotmenteers? Has anyone got any experience of making an old-fashioned barrel like the one in the picture?

We’ve had an email from Roger:

Work as getting rid of a coffee machine it got free from a nescafe rep, and i thought of instead of letting it go to the bin i would rescue it and give it a home. I got it home and realised that it requires these expensive disposable coffee pods to work (the reason work got rid) so I am asking if any of the bloggers/readers of this page own one of these machines and if they have discovered methods of refilling these with filter coffee. Or if no one can help me with this nice ideas on how to reuse them, they are unfortunately made of many materials and hard to recycle. i don’t want to be tied to the evil nescafe brand so any hints or tips would be immense.

I don’t think I can put into words how much those machines annoy me – all the excessive packaging just to force you to keep buying their product. Seriously grrrr! Grrrrr! The one my last place of work had was even worse than the pod things (which seem to be aluminium) – it was a plastic bag thing with a plastic nozzle for attaching to the machine: two minutes of convenience versus an eternity in landfill, smashing, just smashing.

Anyway, there seem to be some reuse hacks out there for the pods but some people complain that the coffee isn’t quite as good and/or it might break the machine. If the machine is going to get ditched anyway, I suspect it’s worth a shot.

Any other suggestions?