Whitney has emailed us, asking about margarine tub lids:

i’m trying to do my part and make sure that i recycle everything that i can, or at least find a way to reuse it. i recycle my #5 containers of cream cheese, margarine, etc, but have nothing to do with the lids, which even if they are also #5 they are not accepted in my recycling.

any ideas of what i can do with them? typically i just put them under plant pots, but i can only have so many plants. and i thought about making coasters, but i don’t really use coasters, so i’m open to some new ideas!

When we get this type of tub, we tend to keep both the lid & the tub to reuse for leftovers instead of Tupperware or use as small storage boxes in other parts of the house (eg, we’ve got one for batteries, one for fuses and one for shoe polish in our misc cupboard). But there are a lot more uses for the tub part than the lids so I imagine there are a lot of lids going in the bin — let’s see what we can do with them :)

Funnily enough, a lot of my ideas are the same as the ones from Monday’s handicapped tags – add them to your tool box for use while decorating/painting, cut them up for plant markers in the garden, cut the rim off and shape the remaining plastic to use as a dough scrapper etc.

Anyone got any more original ideas though? :)

(Photo by cogdogblog)

We’ve had an email from Diana:

What can I do with the plastic pots my moisturizers and hand creams come in? They’re round plastic with screw lids but because they’ve had chemical creams in them, I don’t want to use them for food.

Why not check if you can bulk buy your favourite moisturiser/hand cream and refill the existing pots rather than buying new ones each time?

You could also make your own creams – or give them (possibly via Freecycle/Freegle) to someone who does.

As for other reuses, they’d be perfect for storing small things like beads/button or nails/screws — and would give you an instant maraca-type instrument too ;) . They’re also pretty water tight so might be useful for small emergency kits – you could probably fit a pack of matches, a few tea lights and maybe a mini LED torch/flashlight in there.

Other suggestions?

We already know what to do with narrow-necked glass bottles like those used for beer or lager and plastic screw-on caps, but what about the metal bottlecaps?

Like so many little random things, these lids seem infinitely usable – I just can’t think of many ideas to use them up.

Any suggestions?

(Photo by trelin)

We’ve had an email from Sue, asking:

What can I do with spare saucepan lids? I’ve just cleaned out my cupboard and I’ve got loads of old ones that don’t match any of my current pans – some of them are probably older than my teenage children!

Well, firstly Sue, you can give them to me! We’ve only got one lid so have to juggle it around if we’re cooking multiple items that need lids. There are probably a large number of people in a similar position so you could probably Freecycle them in your local area. Lids are great for making cooking more efficient – saves all that excess heat escaping into the kitchen – and recycling them between people that need them means it better for the environment on two counts.

But aside from that, any other suggestions?