Last week’s Reverse This question – about how to make a rain chain using recycled materials – has kicked up another question: how to make a water butt/rain barrel using recycled, reclaimed and repurposed stuff.

If you’ve got a rainwater barrel, it means the rain chain doesn’t need to end up in an ugly drain and, of course, it also saves the precious rainwater for use around the garden or in grey water systems.

The specific requirements for the butt depend on what the water is being used for but most I’ve seen tend to be reasonably opaque (to reduce algae growth) and many, particularly commercially produced ones, include a tap or a hinged lid to make it easy to access the water.

Any suggestions? What have you seen being used by creative allotmenteers? Has anyone got any experience of making an old-fashioned barrel like the one in the picture?

We’ve had an email from Roger:

Work as getting rid of a coffee machine it got free from a nescafe rep, and i thought of instead of letting it go to the bin i would rescue it and give it a home. I got it home and realised that it requires these expensive disposable coffee pods to work (the reason work got rid) so I am asking if any of the bloggers/readers of this page own one of these machines and if they have discovered methods of refilling these with filter coffee. Or if no one can help me with this nice ideas on how to reuse them, they are unfortunately made of many materials and hard to recycle. i don’t want to be tied to the evil nescafe brand so any hints or tips would be immense.

I don’t think I can put into words how much those machines annoy me – all the excessive packaging just to force you to keep buying their product. Seriously grrrr! Grrrrr! The one my last place of work had was even worse than the pod things (which seem to be aluminium) – it was a plastic bag thing with a plastic nozzle for attaching to the machine: two minutes of convenience versus an eternity in landfill, smashing, just smashing.

Anyway, there seem to be some reuse hacks out there for the pods but some people complain that the coffee isn’t quite as good and/or it might break the machine. If the machine is going to get ditched anyway, I suspect it’s worth a shot.

Any other suggestions?

Because of all the random things on this site, I get a lot of spam emails from people trying to sell me those random things in bulk for a super cheap price. My delete key is all but worn out.

However, every now and again, a message comes through that’s actually inspiring instead of annoying – and that was the case again this week when someone tried to sell me carshades – the things you put along your dashboard/rear window to stop turning the car into a giant dehydrator oven.

Last week, I’d seen someone using one of the silver-sided ones to reflect more sunlight into their garden and seeing the email yesterday made me wonder what else they’d be good for. I imagine the silver-sided ones (typically cardboard with a foil layer) would also work well behind radiators.

Any other suggestions? What about the ones that are just shades rather than reflectors?

We’ve always tried to minimise the amount of waste our cats produce by buying in bulk where possible, choose recyclable packaging over plastic bags and they mostly eat biscuits, which have less water content so aren’t as heavy/bulky to ship.

Except now one of them is sick – very sick – and is having trouble digesting regular cat food. I’ve become incredibly familiar with cat food ingredients (and also the consistency of cat poop) over the last few months and the better quality stuff (stuff that is made up of at least 50 or 60% the meat/fish it claims to be – most cat food is around 4%) seems to come in small quantities in plastic pouches, or tiny, teeny cans. Enter loads of extra waste.

I try to feed her frozen fish/mince at least once a day – since that has a considerably lower packaging cost – but worry that she’ll miss out on essential vitamins/minerals if I just feed her those all the time. I’m happy to make her food from scratch but don’t have time to do it at every meal time since she’s eating lots of small meals throughout the day. I’ve tried making a chicken & rice mash before but it didn’t really interest her.

Unfortunately for us, this is a short scale problem with this cat (*sniff*) but looking at the ingredient lists on the standard cat food boxes & cans has made me want to do better by the other cats.

So has anyone got any suggestions for how I can reduce the amount of cat food packaging waste we’re producing? Anyone found any decent quality cat food (dry or wet) in large quantities rather than tiny sachets? Any popular homemade cat food recipes?

While reusing and recycling is important, the first stage of the waste hierachy is the most important: reducing consumption of raw materials in the first place.

As most greenies know, the amount of energy reclaimed by saving something from landfill is only a tiny proportion of the energy required to have made the thing in the first place and then ship it around the world. By reusing things we already have – either fixing broken things or reusing some waste for a different purpose (as is the aim of this site), we’re reducing our requirement for those new things but we should really be reducing our requirements first, then reusing the things we still need; not just reusing things all the clutter we’ve gathered in the first place.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to try out a new feature on Recycle This: how can I reduce my use of this? if you’re in any way prone to procrastination, the thought of having to reduce everything can stop you doing anything: it’s a lot easier broken down into smaller steps. It’s pretty obvious how to reduce consumption of some things – that random plastic thing that you’re not quite sure what it is but my, it’s pretty (candle holder? bottle opener? plant pot?) from Ikea, just stop, that doesn’t need to be bought – but other things are sometimes a bit harder – and I thought it might be worth trying to get a bit of crowd wisdom/support for those things. And hopefully the suggestions will help other people with their reducing too.

So do you have anything you’re finding it hard to cut down on/wean yourself off? If so, drop me an email – reduce@recyclethis.co.uk and I’ll try to make this a regular thing. Conversely, if you found a really good way to cut back on something, get in touch – it might help someone else give up that same thing too!

We can kick off with one of my bugbears:

• How can I reduce my use of cat food pouches and tiny, teeny cans?