We’ve had an email from Siddharth:

How do I recycle plastic bird food bags? The brown paper ones I can just throw into the paper bin, but the recycling facility doesn’t accept the woven plastic ones.

I suspect there will be some overlap between these bags and the plastic sacks we get when bulk buying rice.

Suggestions over on the rice sack page include making them into shopping bags, aprons or using them as a groundsheet/roof-liner for kids’ playhouses.

Cut into strips, they could also be used as ties around the garden – we always have stuff out there that needs tying to other stuff ;)

Any bird seed bag specific suggestions?

It’s really starting to feel like spring here and I’ve been sorting out the garden in short bursts over the last week as well as repotting some houseplants for their shortly-to-commence mad growth spurt.

Our compost bin compost tends to have big chunks of material in it so I just dig it into the beds and use shop-bought compost for the houseplants. As I can only carry the small sacks of it back from the shops, I quickly end up with a number of the compost’s plastic bags lying around the garden – they’re quite a heavy yet flexible, opaque plastic and the inside is usually black. They’re pretty strong but do tear if treated too roughly and/or pokily.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve used them to line hanging baskets (black-side out) and collected random plastic pots in them to stop said pots ending up blown all over the street but I’d love to hear it if anyone has any more ideas for reuses.