We’ve had an email from Derek asking about large scale recycling:

hello. i work in heavy industry and we use thousands of pairs of work gloves, most are thrown away when torn, but a lot are thrown away when covered in substances like oil or just dirt. could you tell me if these gloves could be cleaned and recycled or cleaned and used for other purposes.

I don’t know for sure but I suspect the fabric of all the gloves, whether torn or not, could be reclaimed – shredded up to make insulation if nothing else. Anyone know for sure?

Any other ideas about recycling – or reusing them on a large scale?

(Photo by Penny Matthews)

It was my birthday yesterday – I spent it with 200 geeks in Wolverhampton, as you do – but since it was my third birthday since starting Recycle This, I’ve run out of birthday-themed ideas to post :)

So to give myself the day off, here’s a cheating post linking back to all the birthday-themed things we’ve discussed before:

• How can I reuse or recycle … birthday cards?
• How can I reuse or recycle … wrapping paper?
• How can I reuse or recycle … balloons?
• How can I reuse or recycle … stale cake?

Anything birthday-themed I’ve missed? If so, leave a comment below or drop me an email – ideas@recyclethis.co.uk – and I’ll use it on the site to bolster our birthday section :)

(Photo by nazreth. I’d need 29 of them. Because I’m greedy. And also 29 now.)

We’ve had an email from Sandi asking:

What can I do with old paint charts, the colour reference ones? I know I can just throw them in with cardboard recycling but I wondered if anyone had any creative ideas for things to do with them instead.

I’ve heard that home style experts recommend keeping a swatch of colours and material samples for your key rooms in your bag when you’re out shopping – so that you can check if things match/work together easily – but I guess that only uses up the tiny square or two of paint that you used, and not the rest.

It’s not quite the same but my dad had a colour chart for his stamp collection when I was a kid and I used to love playing with that – looking at the different shades of each colour and how they gradually turn from one shade to another – and I guess paint charts could be a limited version for that — ideal if you want to raise kids like me who, when asked for their favourite colour, will reply “a matt grey-blue with a subtle hint of green” or “purple-tinged charcoal”. (I would probably jump for OCD-joy if someone gave me a pantone reference guide for my birthday on Sunday. :) )

Other suggestions though? I don’t scrapbook so don’t know but could they be useful for that?

(By the way Sandi, if you’ve got some leftover paint from your DIY work, you may want to check out our post on that very subject and see how it can be redistributed to good causes.)

Last week’s post on HA Schult’s Trash People reminded me of something I saw on Alice in Blogland‘s blog a few months ago (Alice is a regular commenter on this site and was the one that suggest we should make the reverse Recycle This idea a regular thing – hi Alice! :) )

Anyway, she linked to the awesomely amazing work by photographer Chris Jordan, which really illustrates the scale of the problem we face when it comes to trash.

His “Running the Numbers” exhibition combines awesome visuals with statistics about usage/wastage in contemporary America – for example, his ‘Cans Seurat’ picture “Depicts 106,000 aluminium cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds”. (It covers other social issues too – for example, gun-related deaths per year and the amount of children in the US without health care.)

Speaking about his previous exhibition ‘Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption’, Chris said:

“The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.”

Estelle – of Monday’s shelf-lining foam query – had a second “how can I recycle…” question:

How to reuse/recycle these small, transparent plastic envelopes that airlines use to put the freebie eyemask and ear plugs in?

I presume they throw them away when used? I recently flew Air France and salvaged a few of them lying about before I disembarked. I expect they have infinite uses. But what are they?

I use them to store small things that would otherwise get lost in my clothing cupboard, like those detachable decorated bra straps, and ‘secret socks’ (undersize socks to wear inside ones shoes). They could be nice for storing bits of jewellery too, perhaps.

Funny that Estelle should use them for tidying her underwear drawer – I’ve got a few in mine as well since multi-pack knickers tend to come in a similar be-poppered bag. We’ve got another envelope like that in the kitchen, to hold take-away menus.

Other suggestions?