We’ve had an email from Jamie:

Hey. I’ve got a broken Guitar Hero guitar. Don’t know what to do with it and saw your page about game controllers so thought you might be able to help.

Depending on how/why it’s broken, you might be able to send it back to the vendor: if it’s their fault, they should replace it. If however, it’s broken because you got a little too into the Rock moment and smashed it on the floor… they’ll probably be less like to replace it ;)

Again depending on how it’s broken, it might worth eBaying it for “spares or repairs” – I know the head and neck separate on the newer guitars, I wonder if if the broken part could be swapped out… If it’s broken for an electronic switch issue, someone that way inclined might be able to fix it in a shot.

Aside from that, a toy for a kid?

Other ideas?

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

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?

We’ve had an email from Dan:

Hi. I saw your page about laminate floor and I wondered if you knew what I could do with the foam underlay. We bought a giant roll but only used half of it. What can we do with the rest?

As with the flooring itself, eBay or Freecycle might be the easiest options if you just want to get rid of it.

Aside from that though, I guess it could be used in the same was as thin foam sheeting or foam shelf liners from supermarkets – as packaging, insulation around pipes or for making wine bottle/can sleeves to keep them cool.

Any other suggestions?

We’ve had a question from fishcake on our Suggestions page:

how can i recycle christmas gift wrap bows? I have a few bags worth and was thinking of decorating the fridge but maybe this site can find some more ideas.

There is of course always the option of donating them to a charity show or Freecycle for someone else to use for their original purpose but by the sounds of it, fishcake fancies reusing them at home.

In bow form, the only ideas I can think of are decorative like fishcake’s own fridge idea – but I suspect there will probably more ideas for reuses if they can be opened out into a long ribbon thread than in their bow shape.

Anyone got any suggestions for the bows as bows and/or in opened-out ribbon form?

(Photo by dafunky1

We’ve had a message on our Suggestions page from Ruti (who, incidentallty, have left hundreds of useful ideas all over the site over the last few days – thanks Ruti!):

What to do with laminated signs? I work in a 6th form College and various signs etc. are produced as A3 or A4 and laminated. However, eventually some details become out of date.

What could I do with these? there are only so many placemats / craft messy mats anyone could need!

For some reason, I can’t think of anything other than using white ones to make snowflake decorations – but the end of January is possibly a bit late for that type of thing.

So any other suggestions?