It’s really starting to feel like spring here and I’ve been sorting out the garden in short bursts over the last week as well as repotting some houseplants for their shortly-to-commence mad growth spurt.

Our compost bin compost tends to have big chunks of material in it so I just dig it into the beds and use shop-bought compost for the houseplants. As I can only carry the small sacks of it back from the shops, I quickly end up with a number of the compost’s plastic bags lying around the garden – they’re quite a heavy yet flexible, opaque plastic and the inside is usually black. They’re pretty strong but do tear if treated too roughly and/or pokily.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve used them to line hanging baskets (black-side out) and collected random plastic pots in them to stop said pots ending up blown all over the street but I’d love to hear it if anyone has any more ideas for reuses.

We’ve had an email from Paul Smith asking:

I’m really interested in how one would recycle a yoga mat? One of the old school, pvc based ones, not the eco friendly one (which I have now).

If Paul means the type of mat I think he means, they’re a long thin piece of foam, about 6ft long and 2ft wide (185cm by 66cm ish) and about half an inch (1cm) thick. Depending on the requirements and the thickness/flexibility of the foam, they can either be rolled up like a camping bedroll or are left flat (the ones at my uni gym were like that).

So any suggestions for reuses? Or are there any recycling options if somewhere (like a gym) was getting rid of them in bulk?

Paul doesn’t say what condition his yoga mat is in – some of the ones at the uni were bashed to smeg at the sides and going thin where they’d been doubled up – so re-use suggestions for falling apart ones would be good too, just in case.

(Photo by bharat – I couldn’t find a picture without a ball in it too, so just imagine that’s not there :) )

We’ve already covered a number of Valentine’s Day type things:

• Dried fresh flowers – such as roses
• Greetings cards
• Wrapping paper

And while we’ve thought about the wrapping on individual chocolates, we haven’t thought about the chocolate boxes themselves.

Some of them – particularly the high end, Valentine’s Day ish ones – are quite pretty and I’ve used them in the past for storing letters and the like. But what about other reuses? Have

Some boxes have formed plastic to hold the individual chocolates – like cake packaging – so it would be great if anyone had recycling ideas for those too.

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I’ve always been a film fanatic and amassed quite a collection of videos over the years until DVDs came along. Most of my pre-recorded ones were given away and the ones we recorded ourselves went to live in the attic along with the VCR itself. A couple of years on, they’re still up there.

I hadn’t thought of them though until I posted the blog on televisions a couple of weeks ago then Brian emailed to say he had a similar collection of now-redundant tapes too – and now here we are: how can we reuse or recycle video tapes?
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I can’t stand anything in my ears but I have a few friends who love their music delivered right to their ear drums.

For one reason or another, they go through headphones like billy-o. Sometimes the wires break or get damaged and sometimes it’s one or other of the ear pieces that goes – and given the amount of people using iPods and the like these days, thousands of pairs of broken headphones must end up on the rubbish tip each week.

So any suggestions for ways to recycle or reuse them? Is cannibalisation possible – taking working bits from a couple of pairs and sticking them together? And what about preventative measures to stop them breaking in the first place?

(Photo by ravuri_rp)