I was just filling up a glass with water when suddenly it decided to violently smash itself against the sink. I don’t know why. Perhaps it thought its life wasn’t worth living because it was half empty rather than half full or something.

Anyway, now I have a broken glass.

We’ve covered broken crockery before but I would worry about using the glass pieces in the bottom of a plantpot or around the garden because they’re so sharp and slivery.

So what can I do with it instead? I know you can’t recycle Pyrex and sheet glass in bottle banks but what about drinking glasses? It was a very basic, non-patterned clear glass – can they be recycled?

We’ve had an email from Scott Jones:

I have a bunch of old 45’s that are worthless and I feel awful just throwing them out. Any suggestions?

In my younger days, I worked at my local hospital radio and remember feeling the same way when they planned to dump a load of old records – both 7″ singles and full albums. I scavenged the ones that weren’t in good enough condition to charity shop and decorated storage boxes with them at home, particularly boxes to hold my own CD collection just for the juxtaposition of the usurped technology alongside the newer one.

I’ve also seen 45s turned into clocks – with the hands etc sticking through the hole in the middle – and ashtrays. If Scott doesn’t feel up to doing that type of thing, perhaps someone on his local Freecycle group might.

Has anyone got any other suggestions for reuses or for recycling them?

(Photo by andybahn)

We’ve had an email from Aleta asking for ideas on how to reuse or recycle plastic prescription tablet and vitamin bottles/containers.

They’re usually so sturdy – and usually childproof – that ways to reuse them would be best but can they be recycled? I can’t see a number on the bottom of any of few we have lying around here – does anyone know what type of plastic they are?

Also, does anyone know if there are any schemes to reuse bottles as medicine/prescription bottles again (after sterilising or whatever)?

(Photo by Carin)

We’ve covered on VHS cassettes before but now Suzy has emailed asking about their now redundant solid cases:

I have some old vhs tape cases. The cases are made of a plastic shell to hold the video that is glued to a cardboard outer layer with the artwork printed on it.

Is it possible to recycle this plastic? I don’t see any recycling symbols but I’d hate to just throw them away!

There must be thousands and thousands of these things kicked about as people dumped their old videos. So any suggestions for recycling or reusing them?

(Photo by Suzy – thanks Suzy!)

We’ve had an email from Sue Taylor:

We’ve just moved to a much smaller retirement flat and we have hundreds of old holiday snaps and photos that none of the family want… You know the sort of thing, me in the pool, him in the pool, me on beach, him on beach etc etc yawn yawn…

Can they be recycled and if so who do I send them to?

We’ve got similar piles of photos – I’m quite the snapper, but not a very good one, and so have heaps and heaps of utterly blurred shots of cats quickly moving out of shot or ones of a sheep/band on a mountain/stage about two nautical miles away from me from the days before we went digital.

So any suggestions? I realise there are loads of potential craft projects for favourite photos but what about those ones that aren’t particularly favourites?

(Photo of photos by twasa)