We’ve had an email from Louise, saying:

Here in Malta ice cream comes in rectangular plastic containers. I use them a lot to organize my drawers and cupboard, they’re useful for all kinds of bits and bobs. However I’d like to use some as storage boxes on open shelves, and I’d like to decorate them. Any suggestions?

I love those ice cream tubs. The stuff that isn’t aimed at the luxury market in the UK comes in those rectangular tubs too and I’ve got them all about the place – holding beads/craft stuff, packets of seeds, cat medicines etc. The 2litre tubs are a great size for storing stuff in and of course the regular shape is great for stacking.

I haven’t redecorated any of mine though – anyone got any hints/ideas?

Because I’m obsessed with wire stuff at the moment, I might be tempted to try wrapping it in plastic coated wire (something like a less complicated version of these bottles) – I suspect that would really transform it but would take a lot of wire.

Any other suggestions?

As I mentioned earlier in the month, it’s the ‘Recycle Into Art’ week of workshops in Liverpool this week.

The event kicked off with a musical event at St Luke’s Church – aka the Bombed Out Church – on Friday afternoon. It was led by Urban Strawberry Lunch, a music/arts group who make instruments out of waste items. Some of them are literally drums – old plastic drums of different sizes which are hit with sticks to produce sounds – while others are considerably more tuneful.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Liverpool a bit later than we’d hoped and had to get some lunch so couldn’t really take part in the workshop in the church gardens but those who were involved looked to be having fun (above).

We did get to have a play on the other USL instruments inside the former church itself though – mostly notable an instrument made out of old hollow piping (different lengths made different notes that sounded like a bass synthesizer) and the “bells” in the church tower – made from suspended old car wheel rims. We gave the “bells” a really good bashing, leaving my ears ringing afterwards too ;)

Unfortunately none of the videos we made did justice to the sound of the “bells” – it was very cool and loud – but here’s John playing the pipe instrument thing:

Lyndall’s second (well, third) query is about festival wrist bands.

particularly the plastic ones for i would have thought the cloth and paper ones could go into a compost bin.

In my festival going days, at this point in the “summer”, I’d have a wristful of bands and I’d wear them until they got too grimy or fell off of their own accord (back in those days, the Reading Festival bands were the best – understated cool – I wore those for months). But once they’d left my wrists, I just dumped them in my “memories” suitcase because I’m too lazy to scrap book.

Nowadays similar wrist bands seem to be handed out for every little thing, just as a longer-lasting hand stamp thing – at conferences, fairgrounds and last week, I saw them being used on a city tour pub crawl thing in Berlin.

So aside from scrapbooking the memory, what else can be done with them? If you had a big stash – perhaps collected off your friends – could you weave them into something?

(Oh, and re: composting the cloth and paper ones – only natural fabrics (such as cotton or silk) should be composted and I suspect bands would more likely be synthetic for durability/cost reasons. Heavily printed paper can cause problems too (the ink can be toxic) so don’t compost them if they’re all inked-up or coated in plastic.)

(Photo by hakore)

Lyndall, of March’s bread tag query, has got a couple more “how can I recycle this?”es for us. Firstly, following on from Monday’s high heeled shoe question:

does anyone have any bright ideas about recycling old crocs? mine now have holes in the bottom of them! would love to get them resoled if possible, but have not looked into this as yet and it’s generally not cheap.

It looks like Crocs themselves have a recycling scheme – old shoes are grounded up to make up (20% of) new ‘SolesUnited’ shoes for distribution in developing countries — but it seems only for US people at the moment (or people who are willing to pay the postage for their old shoes to reach the US). (They also have spare part schemes for replacing broken straps or rivets, which wouldn’t solve Lyndall’s worn-sole problem but might help save a few pairs from being dumped.)

So any other suggestions? I guess the good old standby of gardening shoes is out if they’re leaky but I suspect the lightness of the foam might be useful for something.

(Photo by sugarbeatl)

We’ve had an email from “trapkuspt” about reusing baby wipe containers:

The kind that have the pop up feature, so the opening is a soft plastic.

They have been great for holding plastic bags I want to reuse, cotton balls, puzzle pieces, etc.

And the thin wipes box for the diaper bag works pretty good for q-tips in the bathroom drawer.

I’ve also found that the hard plastic boxes are useful for filling with tissues in places where a cardboard tissue box would go soggy such as a steamy bathroom or near a splashtastic sink.

Other suggestions?

• How can I reuse or recycle other baby related stuff?