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)

We had shower curtain rings a few weeks ago but what about the curtains themselves?

Our shower curtain is getting a bit passed it – it’s torn at some of the ring points, there is something that looks like hair dye along the bottom (even though neither of us dye our hair but whatever, it won’t come off) and mildew has well and truly taken over. We clean off the black mould regularly but the times between scrubbing it clean seems to be getting shorter and shorter – we think the slightly rough fabric is to blame.

Anyway, we’re going to look out for a new one – or get one of those solid screen things since they’re easier to clean. But what can we do with the old one?

Especially, any ideas that can make use of the fact most curtains have a fun or pretty pattern on them?

(Photo by danzo08)

We’ve had an email from Carole Minvielle about shower curtain rings:

I have loads of these stored for some use I am yet to discover, but I found a use for ONE! I wanted a pretty soap dish for my favourite scented soap but it had to have ridges in the bottom so the water could drain off and the soap not be a soggy mess.
But the only ones I could find were ugly.

Eventually, I had the idea of putting a plastic shower curtain ring in the base of a pretty dish. The soap goes on top, stays dry and lasts longer, the translucent white ring disappears against the white dish, and the dish looks lovely in my bathroom.
But what can I do with the other 30-odd?

We’ve got loads of wooden rings (exactly like the ones pictured) floating around too – I think the person that owned the house before us had a bit of an obsession. I’ve thrown a stash in my craft supplies box – for use, say, at the bottom of a macrame plant hanger – but aside from that I can’t think of much else to do with them. Suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Am about bottle caps:

As we have a lot of plastic water bottles, and they are easy enough to recycle/reuse… but what about the screw-on bottle tops?

When they are recycled the council insist the lids are not included…and I hate to waste all those little lids.

I always keep a few spare ones in case I lose/drop-somewhere-rank the lid of a bottle I’m re-using. I’ve also used them (usually in pairs for stability) to add height when a plant pot sits too low in the planter – water bottle caps add about 1cm while milk bottle ones are a little wide and not as tall.

Anyone got any other suggestions?

We featured babies’ dummies last week and it made me realise we hadn’t covered much baby paraphernalia – but there is a sure to be a lot of it out there.

So how about babies’ bottles?

Can they be sterilised sufficiently to be passed on to others? And if not, what other things could they be used for?

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

(Photo by spekulator)