It’s been a while since I’ve featured some of the wonderful reusing, recycling and upcycling links I’ve spotted recently. So, without further ado…:

• Drinks can pop top lampshade I love this lampshade made with drinks can pop tops – it’s like modern chainmail :)
• Drinks can bottoms necklace The other end of the cans – a great reuse since so many crafts using the pop tops or the sides of the cans, but I’ve not seen many using the stiffer curved bottoms.
• Fake shell-like pendants from bubble wrap Following on in the “you’d never guess what this necklace used to be” line, this tutorial shows you how to make shell-like decorations for jewellery from bubble wrap.
• Old jeans into placemats I think I’ve seen something like this before but it’s still a great idea – denim placement from old jeans, using the pockets as cutlery/napkin holders – cute!

• Very fun bench from three old chairs Speaking of cute, how fab is this bench made from old chairs?
• Old t-shirt wrapped bangles Revamp old boring bangles with old fabric from t-shirts or the like – two upcycles in one!
• Thumb-controlled watering can from an old bottle The simple on/off functionality of this quick creation from Hester at Fun in the Making would be perfect for watering little pots and seedlings in the garden without wasting water.
• Quick bags & punnets from newspaper Finally, Lucie has been in touch to show off this ace video for making small bags for fruit/veg from newspaper. Perfect if you want “disposable” bags for sharing your crop gluts this summer:

(Bench photo by Kindall)

Inspired by clearing out of bathroom cupboards this morning, I thought we’d have a cleaning themed week here on Recycle This. We’ve covered various cleaning related things in the past – pump action spray bottles, washing powder packaging, “freshener” shakers and reducing the amount of cleaning products used – but there are still a few things we could think about reusing, recycling, upcycling & reducing.

We’ll talk about more specifically cleaning alternatives later in the week but bleach, and so bleach bottles, is a candidate for reduction. There are alternatives to such harmful stuff in plastic bottles. But some people are a bit “prise it from my cold dead hands” about bleach and will never be parted from it, no matter what us vinegar loving hippies say.

All the ones I’ve checked have been made from HDPE – type 2 plastic – and most areas that collect plastic collect resin code 2 plastics so they can be recycled but I think reuses might be harder to identify. They feel less reusable than, say water bottles or pop bottles – because of the chemical residue, because they’re thick opaque plastic and in the case of some of them, a quirky bent neck for getting under toilet rims.

Anyone got any reusing/upcycling ideas though? Do you do anything with yours or do you just throw them into your recycling bin?

We’ve had an email from Rebecca:

Love the website, have found it really useful but I want to know if I can recycle rubber teats? I am going to sell the bottles on e-bay for re-use but I know Mums won’t want used teats and we have about 25 of varying sizes and I cannot bear to just chuck them.

Would our local recycling centre take them, is there even a facility for recycling rubber bottle teats?

Would love any suggestions.

Apparently the clear teats are more likely to be silicone than rubber – silicone can be recycled but isn’t done so widely. If they are rubber, there may be a collection bin at your local household waste recycling centre but most recycling of rubber seems to be on a bigger scale – car tyres for example.

So what about reuses? It might be worth calling a local animal shelter to see if they could use them for bottle feeding small creatures – they might need the attached bottles too though.

Any other suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Jenny asking:

I have some old perfume bottles, they are so pretty they shouldn’t just be thrown in the normal glass recycling.

Is there anything I can do with them, other that just display as an ornament. I don’t want to do this, as I hate clutter. Any ideas?

For starters, some of what to do with old Tabasco sauce bottle ideas might apply here too – since both are small, pretty glass bottles with a tiny-teeny neck.

For sprays, I also like DJ’s idea on the pump action spray bottle page – fill the bottle with water to use as a cooling spray mist on hot days.

Taking that a step further, you could refill the bottles by making your own scented body or room sprays using essential oils – if that’s not your sort of thing, you could maybe offer the empty, clean bottles on Freecycle to someone in your area who would like to do that.

What else can you do with empty perfume bottles? Do you have any special ways to reuse them?

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Rhiannon left a message on our suggestions page:

I was wondering if you have any ideas for an empty Tabasco sauce bottle? They are so pretty, but due to the very narrow neck (so that you can only shake out small droplets at a time) it is unsuitable for storing anything that I can think of.

We’ve covered narrow-necked glass bottles on here before – beer bottles or wine bottles and the like, but Tabasco sauce bottles are that bit narrower than most.

I’ve seen the teeny-tiny single serve Tabasco sauce bottle used as jewellery but the normal size bottles are a little too big for that. ;)

They might be useful for liquids that need to be added drop-by-drop – food colouring for example, but that type of thing tends to come in a little bottle with a dropper thing anyway.

The largest standard size (150ml ish?) bottle would make a cute single-stem vase (if I recall correctly, they tend to have a plastic dropper thing in the top but that can usually be pulled out) but the standard size bottle would be too small for everything bar the absolutely thinnest stem.

So suggestions?