We’ve had another email from Am (who comments as Delusion), this time saying:

My partner is asthmatic and so goes through inhalers. It seems a waste to throw them out, I don’t think there is much to be done with reusing them though I may be wrong.

Does anyone know of anywhere these could be returned for reuse? Even if it is only the plastic outer casing?

My first thought would be to ask the chemist to not include the plastic part with each refill – but if they get the complete inhaler from the pharmaceutical company already packaged up, they probably would end up just throwing them out from the shop. Does anyone know what the situation is with this?

And what about suggestions for reuse? Or recycling the individual bits?

(Photo by Jenny Rollo)

As I might have mentioned before, John and I write a geeky webcomic together and we sell geeky t-shirts based on jokes from the strip. We decided we’d only sell the tshirts if we could do it right and were lucky enough to find a printing company with a good ethical & environmental policy. We also send the shirts out in recycled envelopes or (for more orders of multiple shirts) in brown paper parcels because those one-off plastic posting bag things seem excessively wasteful.

We hope that our wonderful tshirt buyers recycle or compost the paper or envelopes but I thought it couldn’t hurt to come up with a few more reuse suggestions. We’ve already covered envelopes so anything specific that brown paper is good for?

Jack and Jill used it, along with vinegar, to fix his head but away from the world of nursery rhymes, what else could it be used for?

(Photo by lusi)

We’ve had an email from Kate Parsons with a clever idea for using the bottoms of fizzy drink bottles:

I use the bottom 3 or 4 inches of a 2 litre plastic coke bottle to make drawer tidies at work for all my paper clips, staples, etc. You can keep them in place by stapling them together or with a blob of blutack on the bottom!

A great idea and it made me realise that while we’ve covered a large range of different types of plastic bottles (eg, milk, squash, shower gel, shampoo, miniatures ones, pump action ones, and water, water cooler and hot water ones), we’ve not looked at pop bottles – and their blobby-shaped bottoms – in particular.

So any specific uses for the bottoms of those bottles? Anything else the separate compartments can be used for? Suggestions for any size bottle are fine.

Back in the day, before I realised what an ecological nightmare they were, I used to yoink the mini shampoo bottles, soaps and leftover shower caps from hotel bathrooms, particularly when we stayed in fancy hotels and they came in interesting bottles and smelled of great things. I built up quite a collection and I know I’m not alone in doing so (hi mum!).

These days we take our own (full size or thereabouts) supplies with us when we go away but I’m also still working through the stack of these little bottles in the back of the bathroom cupboard.

Aside from refilling the empties for gym/spa/pool sessions when you don’t want to lug a full bottle of shampoo or shower gel, does anyone have any other suggestions for reusing these little single-use-size critters?

A couple of our friends smoke and while they usually roll their own, occasionally a cardboard hard pack ends up floating about too and it makes me wonder what they can be re-used for – since they’re pretty sturdy but light constructions.

Spies in films use them for hiding bugs or recording equipment in, but what about us lesser, real-life mortals?

Any suggestions?

(Photo by logic)