A few years ago, I bought a box of supermarket value cling film (aka plastic wrap, saran wrap, cellophane) but in the process of making it value, the producers seem to have left out the cling.

I don’t use it much anyway (more of a fan of re-usable tubs) but whenever I do use it, it’s absolutely infuriating because it doesn’t stick to the bowl/pan in question, or to itself, thereby rendering itself utterly pointless as a thorough covering. Grrr.

So any suggestions on what I can use it – essentially just very thin plastic sheeting – for instead?

(Photo by Ilmari Karonen, c/o Wikipedia)

I’ve had an email from Andrew Urban:

I have something that needs to be recycle and actually is recyclable but maybe companies will charge a lot to take them.

We have considered using a wood chipper to chop them into smaller pieces and then send them to a landfill but that will only solve our waste issue not our recycling issue.

This is probably on a lot bigger scale than most of the commenters on this site usually think about but if anyone’s got any ideas at all, post a comment below and maybe Andrew and his company will be able to scale it up and save all that landfill space.

I was potting up the many, many children of my spider plant the other day and I needed more containers to use as plant pots. I went into the cellar and found a couple of old paint tins – gloss paint so actually tins rather than the standard plastic tub used for emulsion these days.

They were just the right size for my plants so have been commandeered for that this time but it made me wonder what else I could use them for – especially since they have (admittedly difficult to remove) airtight lids.

Any suggestions?

Had an email from Russ Beebe asking:

How can I recycle … Coleman, JetBoil, and other nonrefillable fuel canisters? Thanks!

I had no idea what they were but thanks to Google, I now think he means camping gas/fuel canisters (is that right, Russ? if not, please correct me!)

I have a feeling this will be a recycle rather than reuse item but any suggestions for either are welcome.

(Photo by 2sogar)

We’ve got a couple of sieves that I’ve had for years. If I remember rightly, I bought a pack of three of them at the 50p shop in Liverpool before inflation hit and the 50p shop turned into a Poundland-esque effort.

Needless to say, they weren’t the finest quality sieves to start with and after years of use, they’re not going to be winning any “best sieve in the world” contests.

They’re flimsy plastic and the edges of the sieve seem to be permanently gacked up with flour/water glue as well as tea stains from being used as a tea strainer so they’re not really suitable for culinary uses any more.

But what can we do with them instead? They’re a bit fine for using in the garden for getting the stones out of soil but I’m sure there must be other possibilities. Any suggestions?