We’ve had an email from Mary asking about recycling hollow core doors.

I always see doors of one sort or another in skips around here but Mary has come up with an idea for an old one of hers – but needs a little help:

I would like to make a rattan or seagrass headboard for my king size bed by covering an old hollow core door, maybe I can use old matchstick blinds, or I’ll buy some mats, any ideas? I’d also need some kind of edging.

I really like big headboards like that so it sounds like a great idea. Mats would probably be a bit more flexible and may bend around edges – eliminating the need for separate edging – but I do like the idea of “bamboo” blinds – it seems like it would be less rough to lean against.

Any help for Mary?

Or any other ideas about what could be done with an old hollow door?

I was re-watching Juno the other day and it gave me an “ooh, how could I recycle…” moment.

For those who don’t know, Juno is an interesting and funny film about the titular character’s unplanned pregnancy at 16. While Juno herself is a little too wise-cracking for me, the rest of the characters and performances are great so I wasn’t too upset when it got the Best Original Screenplay last month (I’d have given it to Lars and the Real Girl ahead of Juno but the Academy didn’t put me in control of picking the winners this year, boo).

ANYWAY, the father of the baby in the film, Bleeker, has an obsession with orange TicTacs and at one point, he opens his postbox to find Juno and her best friend have filled it with a hundred boxes of the things as a gesture of Juno’s love for him. Since I’m a bit of a recycling geek, my first thought wasn’t “aww, cute”, it was “once fictional Bleeker has munched his way through those, what could he do with the boxes?”

So any suggestions? If you’re not familiar with the low-cal sweets, the clear plastic box is about 5cm (2.5inches) by 3cm (1.5inches) and about 1cm (0.5inch) thick with a little flip lid at the top.

(Photo by bruno-free)

We’ve had an email from Heather:

I have old ripped worn tablecloths and runners and such and I would like to know how to recycle them or donate them. They are not in good condition to donate to the goodwill or such, but don’t want to just throw them into an already overfilled landfill.

I was hoping to find something besides “use them for crafts”, so whatever you can come up with please help!!!

Heh, crafts would be the obvious answer of course – I quite often buy ugly-cool old tableclothes from charity shops for quilting or whatever.

But non-craft ideas… Cleaning rags? Protective packaging around parcels? Pretty drawer liners?

If you don’t want to do anything with them, many council/municipal waste collection sites (and bigger recycling stations) have fabric bins where the textile fibres are collected for reclamation and reuse.

Any other suggestions? Non-craft ones for Heather – but feel free to leave crafty suggestions for those more inclined to that sort of thing.

(Photo by ngould)

Obviously the greener option is to use reuseable nappies but Katie emailed to say:

Did you know that the new disposable nappies are full of ‘swell gel’, it’s the same stuff you get from the garden centre to add to compost to retain moisture and costs around £5 a box.

I have started to re-use my grandson’s nappies, just the wet ones! Rinse them in the shower until all the ‘yellow’ has gone and they don’t smell.

Rip one end and squeeze them into your compost and hey presto, compost that doesn’t dry out. Ideal if you live in an area that has hose pipe bans every summer.

To be honest, I’d be worried about throwing all those petrochemicals into my compost heap because my compost heap is used pretty much entirely for my veg bed but I like the idea – but I could imagine using them at the bottom of flowers tubs in the garden.

Any other suggestions for re-uses? I suspect there will be some overlap with the sanitary towel suggestions but I think the size/shape might lead to some new ideas too.

(Photo by pascal79)

We got some computer hardware bits delivered a few weeks ago and the box was filled out with those inflated cushion things.

When we’ve had them in the past, I’ve always thought “I wonder how I can recycle th- oh, they’re compostable corn starch type plastic. Great!” but this current load is regular plastic so won’t be ending up in my compost heap. They’re still better than polystyrene beads or other old school packaging though.

The plastic seems to be the same as supermarket carrier bags so I suspect they can be recycled in the same places as those.

But what about reuses? They seem to be holding their inflatableness quite well so I think one lot will be used as a bath pillow. Other suggestions?

(Apologies for the bad photo – it turns out it’s quite difficult to photograph things that are clear… If you’ve not familiar with them, they’re essentially inflated plastic bags. The ones we have are about 5x15cm (2x6inches) each and are in rows of 3 or 4 joined along the long edge.)