We’ve had an email from Carmel:

Hello, I’m a paper crafter and was a Stampin Up demonstrator and use the Stampin Up snail adhesives or the tombow roller adhesives.

Anyhow, to refill these things you have to buy another plastic mechanism that has the tape already in it. With all the paper crafters all over the world I’m sure there are lots in landfills. Wondering how they can be recycled for the plastic.

For non-paper crafters like me, the picture is of a snail adhesive refill – as Carmel says, tape already enclosed in a hard plastic shell.

As for actually recycling it, the lovely people at Stampin Up tell me it’s a whole different set of plastics (details below) so I wouldn’t have thought many people will want to pull them apart to recycle as many bits as possible.

Sometimes I’m a bit worried about always suggesting craft projects as reuse ideas because I know not everyone is the crafty sort, but the people who buy these already are crafty or they wouldn’t be buying them so … any fab craft ideas to re-use or repurpose these babies?

Or any other suggestions?

Sherri emailed to ask:

Any ideas on using an old kids slide in the veggie garden?

I like that she added the “in the veggie garden” bit because that’s nearly always where my mind goes first and I worry that I come off as a bit obsessed with growing in random recycled things! ;)

I’m presuming that the slide is made from formed plastic – as that seems to be the thing for garden slides these days – but the ladder section might be chunky plastic or more slender metal, depending on the size of the slide. Either way, they could be used to add height to a veg garden such as providing supports for climbers or for vertical gardening — propped up against a wall, chunky plastic ladders might be suitable for use as a ladder planter (ideal for small pots of herbs and/or salad leaves) or hanging baskets etc could be hooked onto a metal ladder with thin rungs.

Depending on the shape of the slide section, it might be suitable to use in a few different ways in a veg garden – if it’s flat (rather than wavy/bumpy or overly shaped at the top & bottom), it could be used as a water-catching trough underneath pots/containers or adapted into a potting bench type thing (the sides of the slide would stop surplus soil going all over the place … I’m a messy gardener with a soil shortage so this sort of thing would be very beneficial for me!).

Any other veg growing/gardening suggestions?

What about other ideas for reuses or recycling ideas for such a slide?

Karen has left us a message on the Suggest an Item page:

Our plastic patio table just broke. The leg snapped straight off. The legs are rounded on the bottom, so it would be hard to replace.

I saw the post about discolored patio furniture, but is there any way to fix/reuse the table? I will have to throw it away if not!

Without knowing why it snapped off, I’d be loathed to suggest putting a lot of time and effort into replacing it – in case the other legs immediately follow suit. If they are likely to jump on the snapping bandwagon, you could pre-empt that by replacing all of the legs now – it would also mean you wouldn’t have to think about making the new one match the old ones.

Any suggestions what could be reused to make replacement legs? My first thought – because we’re just had a load of ours repositioned/replaced – was something like plastic drainpipes — not the prettiest thing in the world but would be as light as the original legs.

The reuses probably depend on the table itself. I’ve been thinking about making a potting bench that would fold up against a wall when not in use – a plastic table top might be light enough that it could just be suspended on chains from the wall rather than needing legs etc, but it would have to be a square/rectangular table and not too big… Another growing idea might be to flip the table top upside down and use it as a giant saucer for under a set of plant pots to catch run off from watering. Here, we could also add it to the shelters/stuff for them to climb on in the chicken run – possibly fixing the legless part to a wall of the run enclosure.

Those are all very growing-and-chicken-owning me type ideas though – anyone got any more varied or otherwise interesting suggestions?

(Oh, and as I said about the discoloured patio furniture last time, most plastic patio furniture is PVC, which isn’t widely collected post-consumer so you might struggle to actually recycle it. People in the UK should probably check with their local council though, just in case they do collect it.)

Janet has asked us a question on the Suggest an Item page:

I have several combs that I don’t use. Can they be re-used or recycled?

Any unrequired combs found in our house are cleaned then used for cat/dog brushing – they seem to prefer combs to brushes, and their combs go missing with startling regularity (if they were smarter animals, I’d suspect they were hiding them on purpose).

Handle-less combs, the type used for holding hair in place rather than untangling it, can used as the base of a fascinator or decorate it with old jewellery or fabric scraps on a smaller scale for use as a day-to-day hair accessory.

As for actually recycling it, it’ll depend on the material they’re made from. From what I’ve been able to find online, a lot of (modern) plastic combs seem to be made from injection moulded polypropylene (plastic number 5), which can be recycled – but not everywhere collects it and even the places that do often only take it in certain common forms. Most every-day metal ones are steel.

Any other reusing ideas? Or recycling advice?

Tammy Gary has asked:

Would love ideas to reuse the Stax potato chip cans.

We don’t have Stax over here in the UK but my friend Google tells me they’re like Pringles, but packed in a plastic tube instead of waxed cardboard.

Some of the Pringles ideas will still apply: they’re great for storing knitting needles and paintbrushes, can be used as storage for homemade biscuits, and is useful as a small poster tube – for either storing documents without creasing or sending through the post.

As these bad buys are plastic (rather than card) so water-resistant, they will lend themselves to other reuses too – I’d imagine they could easily be turned into a bird feeder (cut a couple of feeding windows about a third/half of the way up, add a perch at the bottom then fill with seed), could be used for storing dried goods in the kitchen or as storage for small kids’ toys (eg lego or jigsaw pieces) or crayons.

Any other suggestions?