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?

We’ve had another email from our wonderfully suggestive friend [Am]:

Due to a slow day at work on Friday I killed time by tidying out my drawers which seem to be black holes for all sorts for junk. What I discovered were about two dozen biro lids. After saving about nine for the numerous biros I also found in the drawer I was left with a collection of lids.

I don’t want to just throw them out and I know most people don’t even use the lids, once they’re off they never see the pen again.

So, does anyone have any crafty or useful ideas for these or if not, can they be recycled?

I used to use them to accessorise blue-tac desk art or to chew when I was bored. I suspect neither the health and safety people or my dentist would approve of the latter though ;)

Better suggestions then?

(Unlike [Am]’s, my office drawer was surprisingly biro lid free and I couldn’t find a photo of them on my usual stock photo site but hopefully you get the idea ;) )

We’ve had an email from Victoria:

Just found your site and love it. Anyway, I saw your story on broken chairs and it reminded me how my company always throws out office chairs instead of fixing them when something breaks – so annoying! I know it’s probably a health and safety thing but it seems so wasteful. As a minimum, can they be recycled?

I’m not sure – but when our (home) office chair dies, I’ll certainly strip it for parts — it’s a silly big “executive” leather one so I’d salvage that for craft projects, the foam cushions for the stray cat’s house, the wheels for the “random parts” box that always comes in handy and the metal frame could go to one of the many, many scrap collectors who visit our street each week — But I realise that’s not necessarily a workable strategy for workplaces.

So anyone else know about recycling them through established schemes? Or can suggest any other reuses?

(Photo by designkryt)