We’ve had an email from Sam, saying:

I have a child’s car seat that has been involved in a minor accident, so can no longer be used as a car seat. I don’t want to put it in landfill. Any suggestions?

If car seats had been around when I was a kid and we’d been in this situation, I’m sure the seat would have been commandeered for bottom-of-the-garden dens – a comfortable seat ripe for imaginative on-a-rocket-into-space games or whatever. We were lucky we had loads of space for that sort of thing and also sorts of junk ended its life down there.

But what if that’s not an option because of space or the child’s too young etc? Any more practical or creative suggestions for the seat as a whole or its foamy/plastic parts?

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

We’ve had an email from Jenny (who makes cool stuff out of old bottlecaps), asking about saddles:

i got a nice new soft bike saddle to replace my old hard one so i can cycle in comfort. but i was trying to think of what i could do with the old one.

any ideas? i’d love to turn it into something funky and cool or useful.

I have a feeling I’ve seen some cool bike seat repurposing but can’t think where or what it was (although a lamp springs to mind for some crazy reason).

Ideas?

(Oh, and recycling cyclists may also be interested in our posts on wonky wheels rims and inner tubes.)

(Photo by cribbe)

Following my post at the start of the month about Jan turning pop bottles into flowers, Jennifer Houck got in touch about some art she’s made out of old rubbish.

I have made quite a few things out of plastic bottles and caps. Our recycler only comes once a month, and will not take bottle caps. So with overflowing amounts of caps and bottles, I decided to see what I could do with this surplus.

This picture she says is playing with colour and texture of the original bottles but in other photos she sent, she painted the bottoms of clear bottles with marble-effect paint – which I think highlighted the cool, and often pretty shapes, of the bases themselves.

She’s also made these really fun figures out of old bottles – using the curved shape of the bottles to full advantage on the bug’s wings and chicken’s tail – and papier mache from old magazines. I like them a lot and am very tempted to give it a go myself.

• How can I reuse or recycle … plastic bottle tops?
• How can I reuse or recycle … the bumpy bottom of pop bottles?
• How can I reuse or recycle … beer bottle caps?

(Are you, or anyone you know, making art by reusing/recycling random old stuff? If so, let me know and I’ll feature it here.)

We’ve had an email from Chris, saying:

I searched the archives, but didn’t find any mention of what to do with breadmaker pans. Mine had the teflon coating peeling off, so I got a new one. I am looking into where to find a scrap metal place, but any other suggestions would be appreciated…

As I might have mentioned before, we have rather eager scrap metal collectors around here so if it was us, we’d probably just have to think about getting rid of it and a telepathic scrap metaler would appear on our doorstep a second later. I suspect our local tip (household waste collection site) also has a scrap metal bin.

But we’re all about reuses here so anyone got any other suggestions? Most breadmaker pans I’ve seen have an annoying extrusion on the bottom (where the mechanics click in) and a short stick thing in the middle on the inside (where you put the turning blades) so they don’t automatically lend themselves to the usual plant pot etc options.

Thoughts?

We’ve had an email from Kate about a pretty specific thing but the bigger question might be more generally useful:

Can anyone tell me if you can recycle fibre glass? Have 20 fibreglass units used to house the scoring screens in a tenpin bowling centre. Units are old and not resellable but would like to get rid of. Also tubes from the monitors need to go as well?

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

A random bit of Googling suggests that fibreglass can be recycled but I haven’t found any thing definite or any specific companies that do it. Anyone know any details?

As for the tubes, I don’t know if they’re similar but we’ve discussed standard tube lighting before – but the general idea there seems to be safe disposal rather than recycling. Any other thoughts about that?