It’s been *slightly* windy in the UK over the past few days and there are lots of shattered slate tiles on the pavements around here.

My mum and dad, who live on the battered west coast, have spotted similar blown off tiles around them but the debris tends to be red roofing tiles rather than slate ones.

These tiles tend to be ridged or curved and around an inch thick – so not useful for all the flat things slate tiles can do, like be coasters. They’re also a rougher texture so can’t be used as mini-blackboards or anything like that.

So, presuming this is quite a common issue around the country at the moment, what can you do with blown down roofing tiles? Whole ones might be able to go back on the roof but what about broken ones?

(Photo by tome213)

This is another of those that I can’t believe we haven’t thought about yet: printer/photocopier paper.

It can, obviously, be recycled: as far as I know, most doorstep recycling schemes offer paper recycling and in all the places I’ve worked, there has been a green bin in the office for at least recycling white paper products, if not all different types like brown envelopes and newspaper.

However, I know not all offices are so green-focused without prompting – does anyone have any good strategies for getting employers to starting caring about this type of thing? Or know of any companies that offer recycling services to business?

And what about ideas for reuse? If something had only had printing on one side, I would either use the other side for printing drafts or make the blank side into scrap notepads (held together at the top with a bulldog clip). But what about other suggestions for reuses, including for when both sides have been printed on? And what confidential matter that can’t spend the next three months on the back of a notepad?

(Oh, and we got mentioned in the Guardian yesterday – if you’re here after reading that mini-article, hello! And if you want to know how to recycle said copy of the Guardian, we’ve plenty of ideas for recycling and reusing old newspapers.)

A couple of weeks ago, my mum and dad’s tv died after seventeen years of faithful service.

Before I could say “ooh, I wonder how that could be reused…”, they whisked it off to the tip for the dutiful tip people to (hopefully) send it for recycling.

But still the question remains in my head – how could an old tv set be re-used? And does anyone know of any recycling schemes if one’s local “household waste sorting site” doesn’t offer the service?

(Photo by eidesign)

I bought a big bag of “reduced for a quick sale” potatoes a few of weeks ago and despite eating a good number of the starchy tubers, there are a few left at the bottom of the bag going quite, quite green.

Potatoes are one of the few things that grow in our clay-y north-facing garden so normally I’d happy plant out old ones and wait for new potatoes to grow in their place but with the weather as it is at the moment, I don’t fancy their chances if it gets suddenly frosty – or my chances of not being blown away and/or drowned while trying to dig a hole for them.

So are there any other things I can do with them instead of planting them out/winging them into the compost bin?

(Photo by lusi)

The moulded polystyrene post last week reminded me that we haven’t thought about that other packaging staple yet – bubble wrap.

The most obvious re-use is to, well, just re-use it for its intended purpose again – but has any one got any interesting suggestions other than just packing up items for the mail or for storage?

And what if some dastardly scamp (usually me in our house) has popped all the bubbles? It loses its padding and protective qualities but I bet it can still be used for other things. Suggestions?

(Photo by fish)