This week’s quick link round-up:

• Amber of Berlin’s Whimsy has a tutorial for making washable covers for Swiffer-style floor sweepers out of old towels
• If our soggy garden is anything to go by, it’s possibly a little late for this now but if you’ve still got pretty dry leaves, you can make them into a bouquet of “roses”
• Crafting a Green World has some useful documentation on calculating the fabric yardage from old bedding
• Make candles from old cooking oil/fat – two methods: one using salt, the other using a wire coil to support the wick
• Finally something that both is and isn’t recycling – how to save seeds from this year’s soft veg to plant next year.

We’ve had an email from Charlotte:

We’ve been tidying the garden for winter and want to get rid of the nasty white plastic garden furniture which has been in the garden for years. How can we recycle it?

If they’re still structurally sound, it would be better to let someone else continue using them – offer them on your local Freecycle/Freegle group. Even if they’ve been out in the elements for a while, they’ll probably clean up with a scrubbing brush and a bit of elbow grease.

In terms of actually recycling them, garden furniture is often made from PVC (plastic code 3) which can be recycled but isn’t widely collected post-consumer.

Any reuses?

It’s Halloween this weekend and the crafting world has been a’flutter with costumes and decorating ideas for the last few weeks – some reusing or recycling stuff from around the home.

• Make a trick-or-treat swag bag out of an old tshirt/vest top
• Make a ghost lantern from an old plastic bottle and a sheet
• Make an owl costume out of old clothes/fabric straps
• Other recycling/reusing Halloween ideas

Don’t forget that while “carving pumpkins” aren’t that tasty for us to eat, chickens (and compost heaps!) still love them — just make sure you remove any dripped wax etc first.

We’ve already covered cotton bobbins – they were one of the first things we featured on the site – but how about ones that are quite a bit bigger?

John threw this one-piece plastic reel at me the other day after he finished wiring up some speakers. I’ve also ones with a little metal (aluminium?) core and cardboard flanges (if that’s the right word, I mean the sticky out bits at the top and the bottom), and really giant ones made from wood.

So any suggestions?

This is something that’s been bugging me for a while but I’ve not known what to do about it – and it occurred to me the other day that some of you awesome, knowledgeable and inspiring people might have some suggestions.

The inconsistency in doorstep recycling across the UK drives me mad. Every council has a different way of collecting it, collecting different things and picking it up on a different schedule. For example, living in Leeds (as I did for a decade until three weeks ago), we had one green bin, emptied monthly, which could contain cans (but not foil or aerosols), all paper & cardboard, and plastics 1, 2 & 4 – but not glass, which had to be taken to bottle banks at supermarkets or tips, or tetrapak which had to taken to one of five locations spread across the city. Now living *just* over the border in the neighbouring council Bradford, we recycle cans (including foils & aerosols) & glass in one bin, paper & card (but not brown cardboard or brown envelopes) in another – but not plastics or tetrapak in either (which have to go to a tip).

Now I know in the grand scale of things, there are bigger things to be annoyed about but I think the confusion caused by such inconsistency and complexity really hinders the everyday recycling process. If in doubt about something, cautious people will leave stuff out – meaning stuff that can be recycled is going to landfill – or less cautious people will throw it in, which could jam up the whole sorting process. It also means recycling advice on packaging is vague – I’ve seen guidance which says “this packaging may be recycled in some places”: gee, thanks for that.
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