We’ve had another meta suggestion – this time from Kate:

How can I recycle a black plastic dustbin?

It’s true you shouldn’t bin a bin!

It is true! We’ve actually got two old bins in our garden – one pre-dating my move here that’s filled with soil and has herbs and ivy growing out of it (the latter pretty much hides the fact it’s a bin) while the other one (our pre-wheelie bin bin) is used for compost. It’s not as good as our proper compost bin – because there is no easy way to get the soil out again – but I consider it a long term overflow thing, to stop the other compost bin being filled up with things that take ages to rot. Before that, when we actually did DIY stuff on the house, it was used to hold bags of sand and cement because it was reasonably water tight.

Any more suggestions?

(Photo by dean)

We’ve had an email from Rachel R, saying:

We accumulate quite a lot of twine from hay bales used to feed horses at work. We get both the rough, “hairy” and plastic kinds. The only thing I can think to do is give it away at gardening sales this spring or to teachers for use in craft projects.

Staying on the giving it away route, someone on your local Freecycle group might be able to make use of it too.

Aside from that, crafty/practical suggestions, the rough hair stuff could be wrapped around a piece of scrap wood to make a cat scratching post (it might need glueing on so the cat doesn’t pull it straight off again) or if you fancy macrame, you could follow a plant hanger pattern which could be used for plants – or presuming Rachel works in a stables (I guess should could be talking about that rare breed of office pony…) – for hanging head height buckets of food/water/treats for the horses.

I’m sure there are lots of other possibilities too though – anyone else got any ideas?

(Photo by Nbauer)

It’s our third Easter here on Recycle This so this is just a quick post harking back to previous Easter-ish posts:

• How can I reuse or recycle … excessive Easter egg packaging? (2006)
• How can I reuse or recycle … excessive Easter egg packaging? (2007)
• How can I reuse or recycle … shiny chocolate wrappers?
• How can I reuse or recycle … wire egg dippers?

(Photo by LotusHead)

We’ve had an email from Lyndall, saying:

hi, i was wondering if anybody knew what to do with bread tags. i hate throwing them away, but i don’t know what else to do with them. would welcome any suggestions.

We don’t really have them over here these days – shops seem to prefer those little sticky things that lose their stickiness (and therefore ability to seal the bag) after one opening but then still manage to attach themselves to your shoes/socks/cat and refuse to come off no matter how much you shake your foot/cat.

Anyway… bread tags/clips. I suspect they could just be reused as general plastic bag seals around the kitchen – but any other suggestions?

(Photo by Bando26)

We’ve had an email from Fiona, saying:

We eat a lot of dried fruit, nuts and seeds and, when we’re in a jam/marmalade/chutney making mood, a lot of sugar too. Which means we have a lot of empty plastic food bags.

Would love to know how to re-use or recycle these.

I would love to know how to re-use or recycle them too – I suspect those type of bags make up the bulk of our to-landfill waste at the moment.

I saw some storage boxes/baskets made from old chocolate bar wrappers at a cool hippy shop the other week and I’m thinking of giving that a go with these type of bags and other wrappers once I finished The Great Can Weaving Project of 2008 (don’t ask) – I’ll post on how that turns out if/when it turns out.

But what about other ideas?

(Photo by sritenou – and if you’re interested in pistachios, check out the post that started this whole website nearly two years ago :) )