Blooming heck, it’s chilly. I’m knitting as fast as I can at the moment to keep us decked out in snuggy socks, hats and scarves – and hoping the needle-on-needle friction will create a bit of warmth too.

(I know in the UK we don’t get really cold winters like in Central/Eastern Europe or in parts of the US/Canada – by those standards, it’s tropical here right now – but because of that, we’re not prepared for it. Two hundred schools were closed in West and North Yorkshire yesterday but we only had 2 inches of snow on the ground. Also: the worst bit about working from home: you can’t use the “there are no buses running” excuse for a day off. Bah.)

Anyway, despite the new woollies and the fact I’ve got a blanket, two cats and laptop on top of me while I write this, I’m still chilly so have been gulping down more than my fair share of hot drinks. John and I have a leaning tower of teabags in the kitchen at the moment (it’s too cold to go to the compost bin after every cup) and our collection of hot chocolate tubs is growing daily.

We’ve got a few of the plastic screw-top jars in the cellar – perfect for our ever-growing random fixings collection, or random allen keys and packets of veg seeds. In the kitchen, they’re too big for spices really but perfect for pulses or dried beans (most of the jars we use are semi-transparent once you remove the label so you can just about make out what’s what and how much is in there).

But what else can we use them for?

I meant to post this last week but time got away from me (as it has a tendency to do these days).

Anyway, shoe company Above+Below London have launched a new partnership with FirstGroup and London Underground to make Chuck Taylor/Converse style basketball hi-tops – with a cute twist.

The shoes’ uppers are made from iconic bus and tube seat covers – from the garish to the very garish – but with that cool retro feel. (I remember the middle one from my youth on rattling MerseyBuses so they’re not just London designs, or rather not just designs only used in London.)

The rubber soles are incorporate recycled old bus tyres and apparently the trim includes “re-used leather cheque book wallets”.

They’re not cheap – at £80-90 – but are sweat-shop free – made in Portugal – and from “100% salvaged UK waste” — which is a LOT more than can be said for most trainers in that price range…

Amongst our friends, mushrooms are a bit like Marmite: people either LOVE them or hate them to the point of inventing fake allergies about them. John and I are firmly in the “love” category but have a bit of a problem with the plastic tubs they often come in because we go through so many – we try to buy loose mushrooms (preferably in a paper bag) wherever possible but still go through one or two of these boxes a week.

I used to use them under plants or to hold seedlings in the greenhouse, but the greenhouse is now used by a local stray cat as a home and I’ve got better saucers/pots around the house.

We also used to use them as a pre-compost-bin counter top bin in the kitchen – ideal for tea bags and the like – but now we’ve got a proper little bin with a lid for that sort of thing.

So what can we do with them instead?

The tubs – deep trays really – are quite thin plastic so not heavy duty for most reusing-as-storage purposes. I guess they could be used as dividers in drawers but we have a severe lack of drawers in this house (none in the kitchen, two in the living room, none in the bathroom, and just a chest of drawers in the bedroom) so everything is already in boxes on shelves.

Other suggestions?

(As for recycling, none of the tubs I’ve checked over the years have had a recognisable identification mark on the bottom – sigh – anyone know what they tend to be?)

We’ve already covered recycling or reusing dead ones but Trevor has a question about recycling schemes for pens that still work:

Here at the School of Health Studies we get inundated with promotional pens from various medical and drug companies.

Most of these pens never get used and just fill up our desks draws. Is there any way of recycling them so that they can be used in third world schools or something?

I suspect most medical and drug companies aren’t going to pay any attention to a request for “no more pens, thanks” so it makes sense to want to pass them on to someone who’ll use them.

So does anyone know of any schemes to send school supplies to third world countries – or deprived ones closer to home?

(Photo by Zonnekoe)

It’s that special day when children (and big kids) up and down the land will open their Tweenies/Hannah Montana/High School Musical/perhaps even Christmas-themed advent calendar and “enjoy” the piece of grey-ish lump claiming to be chocolate. Only 24 more greyish lumps until Christmas, hurrah! say the children.

“Chocolate”-filled advent calendars only really popped onto my radar in my early teens and I have a sneaking suspicion that before then we used to just use the same advent calendar each year – the doors carefully pressed closed again when everything went back in the loft in January. Even if that wasn’t the case, they’d have been easier to recycle because they were just sheets of cardboard rather than the present cardboard/plastic/cardboard sandwiches.

So any ideas for reuses? I guess the cardboard could be torn off for reuse/recycling but without the cardboard, is the plastic at all sturdy enough to be used for Zac Efron* shaped jelly moulds or whatever?

And, to avoid this waste in the future, anyone know of any good reusable ones – or got instructions on how to make them?

(On a related note, I’ve updated our Recycle This Guide to Recycling At Christmas for 2008 – but if you can think of anything else to include or great suggestions I’ve missed, do let me know.)

* He’s the dreamy hunk guy in High School Musical. I know far more about all this stuff than anyone could ever want to know. I also can identify/name each of the Jonas Brothers and know the difference between Selena Gomez and her BFF Demi Lovato. No self-respecting 29 year old should know this stuff. Bah.