I read a good article the other day about how to avoid wasting food including bread, cream, rice and pasta.

I’m a big believer in using up leftovers, particularly in the form of soup or soup related products – but as much as I love soupery, I’m a little sceptical about the comment in the article saying that “even salads” can be soupified.

While I can find a few recipes for different lettuce soups – and am impressed with the suggestions of using up the often wasted outer leaves and inner most bits, I’m still not sure I fancy giving it a bash.

But leftover lettuce is often an issue in our house – if we get a couple of different types of lettuce to have an interesting salad, they start to go limp before we get through them. I guess it’s the mass of people in a similar position that has led to the huge popularity of bagged salad – but we’d rather not go down that route.

So what else can we do with the leftover lettuce? Obviously it can go in the compost heap but if we can use it up before that stage, it would be good.

(Photo by lusi)

Following on from last week’s soggy sponge post, what about those newfangled body scrubber things?

For those that aren’t familiar with them, they seem to be some sort of nylon (?) net, squished together into a puffy ball shape.

They don’t “sog” up as much as sponges but as a commenter on the sponge post notes, all that type of thing are such a fab breeding ground for bacteria, they probably shouldn’t be kept hanging around for too long – and so will be thrown away when there is still a bit of life in them (and I don’t mean the bug life).

I imagine they’d be quite a fun texture for using for paint effects while decorating – but any other suggestions?

(Photo by kitalanya)

We covered candles and their wax about a year ago but Chris Petescia has emailled with a more specific query about paraffin-based candles:

I understand that they are not good to burn for health and environmental reasons, and have switched to beeswax and soy. However, I have a decent stock of what MAY be paraffin candles (they do not say what they are made from). I don’t want to give them/sell them to anyone, because I don’t want anyone else to have the negative elements affect them in any way. IS there any use for them? I’d hate to just trash them…

On the other post, Rene makes a possible suggestion about making them into wax pucks for skateboarders and the like – but anyone else got any other non-candle related suggestions for Chris?

(Photo by jilted)

We’ve had an email from Estelle, asking us if we could promote the mooncup: an environmentally friendly alternative to sanitary towels & tampons. She says: “I’ve had one for three years and am really pleased not to be dumping ‘feminine hygiene’ products into the environment. I’m also happy not to be spending money on them either.”

I’ve heard a lot about them from a number of different sources and the general consensus seems to be they’re fantastic once you get the hang of them.

Estelle’s email reminded me about the stash of towels & tampons I have in my bathroom cupboard. I stopped having periods about five years ago but used to buy-one-get-one-free quite a bit, so collected quite a stock before they became redundant. I thought about giving them away to friends but none of my friends have periods either for one reason or another (the most common reason being that they’re mostly male).

So what can be done with them? Does anyone know of any charities that collect them for redistribution in developing countries or the like? What about reuses – surely their liquid-absorbing qualities must be good for something around the home?

This is possibly a bit like the sponge cleaner thing post but I thought it might be worth doing anyway.

Whenever we have (not sea sponge) bath sponges, they seem to be fine for a while then pretty suddenly go “soggy” in the middle – and the sog just won’t dry or wring out. Any suggestions for how to solve that problem?

And if not, what about suggestions for re-uses?

(Photo by lusi)