We’ve had an email from Julie:

What can I do with old sewing pins? After years of faithful service, they’re all really blunt or really bent or both (since one leads to the other). I know they’re tiny but what can I do with them?

Most pins I’ve come across are made from steel so could probably be recycled with your normal metal recycling. It’s such a tiny amount of metal though, it hardly seems worth the bother but it’s still better than them sitting in a landfill dump somewhere.

As for reuses, blunt dressmakers pins with plastic heads could be chopped down (with wirecutters) and used instead of push pins on a notice board. I also imagine they could be used in costume jewellery making – any specific ideas?

Any other uses?

(Photo by drniels)

Around our area, it’s unusual to see a take-out place without empty big cooking oil cans outside.

Hopefully they’re recycled as part of a commercial doorstep recycling programme but most of time it seems like they’re going to landfill – here they were next to a skip filled with other random rubbish. Very frustrating.

If we took some of them, what could we do with them? I know after intensive cleaning, crude oil barrels can be made into woodburners/rocket stoves and barbecues – could these essentially big tin cans be used for a similar thing on a smaller scale or is the metal not heavy duty enough?

With the top taken off (and the edge made safe), I imagine they could be turned into planters for the garden – albeit ones that might rust over time.

Any other suggestions?

Aside from always useful tshirts or bags, we try to avoid as many promotional items as possible when attending conferences or the like because it’s invariably wasteful junk – but even still, we seem to have ended up with loads of those promotional bottle opener things.

And it’s not just conferences, the last two we got were quietly slipped into our food bag when we were picking up some late night chips – grrr.

We don’t open that many bottles – and a corkscrew or can opener is always closer to hand than a single-use tool – so the little advertisements are just about useless for their intended purpose.

The one in the photo is quite basic so if nothing else, could be thrown in the metal recycling but we’ve got some unnecessarily complex plastic-and-metal ones so not as easily recyclable.

Are they good for anything else other than opening bottles?

We’ve been going through a lot of tomato puree recently and I’ve been cutting open, cleaning and keeping the metal tubes when I’m done with them. Once the top section is cut off, they open up to be a square of thin, flexible (but easily punctured) metal that’s a bright brassy gold colour on the inside.

But what can I do with them?

I got into the habit of keeping them after attending a great recycling workshop last year – Alison Bailey Smith, who ran the class, uses them as part of her wonderful wire work.

I like the idea of some tin work with them – perhaps making little tiny boxes like Atomic Shrimp – but any other suggestions? Any practical ideas for how the little sheets of metal?

We’ve had an email from Greg:

I’ve got some of those fold-up chairs for camping but the metal tubing on one of the legs has snapped. I’m going to keep the seat fabric as a spare but what can I do with the rest of the tubing?

I’m sure a scrap metal dealer would take it in a flash – we have them patrolling our street every few minutes, I’d just have to think about taking it into the garden and they’d appear to take it off me – but obviously reuses are more fun :)

As straight lengths, they’d be great for supporting growing stems in the garden and cut into shorter lengths, you could make a wind-chime thing out of them (I wonder if they’re a wide enough diameter for the wind to whistle through them as well as clanging them together).

Depending how flexible they are/how strong you are, you could also bend them into a spiral to use it as a trivet under pans/hot dishes.

Any other ideas?