We’ve had an email from Karen:

How can I recycle a baby cot, stair gate and play pen?? Cant bear to throw them away but seems difficult to give away!!

It doesn’t have to be difficult to give them away – join your local Freecycle/Freegle group, post an “offer” message and chances are someone will come to collect it from your house, at your convenience, within a few days if not hours (or post an ad on GumTree [like Craig’s List in the UK] or on eBay – if your goal is to get rid of it, start it at 99p and mark it “collection only” and it’s almost sure to go).

Or give them to a charity shop – it might have to be a furniture focused charity or charity shop but there should be one of those near you – and some places even collect furniture donations. The NCT also regularly organise local “nearly new” sales – for parents to pass items onto new parents in need.

As for reuses, we covered baby cots a few weeks ago – some nice ideas on there including making the cot into a bench seat/sofa for the growing kid’s bedroom. Stairgates are also used by people with dogs as well as babies, to keep pesky mutts in or out of certain places – if you know anyone with dogs (particularly small ones), they might be interested. Ditto a play pen to some extent – they’re useful for penning in all sorts of small animals, not just baby humans – someone who breeds cats or puppies might like to use it for a birthing area, or it could be used as a temporary run for ill/pregnant/new rabbits or chickens.

If they’re still in good condition, it would definitely be best to pass them on – any other suggestions for how to pass them on easily? Or for reuses/recycling ideas?

(Photo, which illustrates my doggy point, by ewen and donabel)

Continuing in our Green Halloween series ahead of the spooky day on Sunday…

If you’re carving your own jack-o-lantern this weekend, you’ll end up with a whole load of pumpkin seeds.

While there are varieties of pumpkin that both taste pretty good and grow to a lantern-friendly size, most shop-bought pumpkins tend to be grown for one or the other — and ones sold particularly to be lanterns don’t tend to be that flavourful at all. The seeds could still be scooped out and roasted – but plan to add spices and other yummy things or drown them in toffee to compensate.

While some growers frown on saving seeds from shop-bought produce (because they are often hybrids so less like to breed true, you don’t know what they’ve been pollinated with and there may be disease risks), it’s pretty easy to save pumpkin seeds to grow your own next year (instructions at the bottom of that page).

Other people use the pumpkin seeds for crafty purposes – for example, they make fun beads for chunky jewellery or as mosaic tiles for kids.

Ours, along with any watery, tasteless flesh that’s scooped out, will go to our chickens. Other people use them as part of their lantern creations.

Any other suggestions for what to do with pumpkin seeds?

Continuing in our Green Halloween series…

What with food safety issues and all the urban legends about razor blades & whatnot, nearly all trick-or-treat treats these days are shop-bought and individually wrapped – possibly the worst way to eat sweets or chocolate in terms of packaging waste, especially as it’s mostly plastic wrappers which can’t be recycled.

Do you do anything to minimise the amount of sweetie packaging you give out – or collect?

What are the most reusable or recyclable options?

One way of to reduce, of course, is to opt out of the whole trick or treating thing altogether – but are there any other alternatives?

And while we’ve covered this before in the long dim and distant past, any new reusing/upcycling ideas for the wrappers – transparent ones like in the picture or opaque ones used on mini chocolate bars etc?

(Photo by eisenbahner)

Continuing in our Green Halloween series…

Along with masks and costumes, the shops are full of Halloween decorations at the moment too. Plastic skulls & skeletons, plastic pumpkins, plastic spiders & bats, plastic ghosts & ghouls … lots of plastic.

As with the masks, it’s far greener (and more fun!) to make decorations from scratch rather than relying on stuff that’s mass produced on the other side of the world. There are loads of make your own Halloween decorations how-tos out there (for example, these ten different ideas…). But still, lots of people turn to shop bought stuff.

Any suggestions for ways to reuse or recycle these bits and bobs? Plastic pumpkin/cauldron plant pots?

Or how to repurpose/upcycle things to use them all year around – as decorations or for other purposes?

One idea I saw was using skull ice cube trays as soap moulds – while they intend the finished article to be a Halloween party favour/trick or treat gift, why restrict the fun to just this event? I say fun skull soaps all year around!

Another idea for a bigger, harder plastic skull – drill/poke pencil size holes around the cranium and use it as a fun pen/pencil pot – like Pinhead from the Hellraiser films, but with brightly coloured felt tips.

Anyone using Halloween decorations or party favours to make spooky costume jewellery?

Any other ideas?

Continuing in our Green Halloween series…

So yesterday, we looked at reuse or recycling ideas for Halloween masks – and I suppressed my desire to rant about shop-bought costumes. In my ever-so humble opinion, homemade costumes are way more fun – and they often reuse and recycle stuff, rather than using resources to make a one-off outfit.

In the past – way back in the past – we spoke about making Halloween costumes in general but I wanted to think about masks in particular this time – partly, because I mentioned yesterday, I sometimes need non-Halloween masks for theatre things and so the more suggestions the merrier.

What have you used to make masks?

Any suggestions for base materials – things that are malleable or things that already have a suitable shape? I guess the most basic type of mask is an oval of card (cereal box?), shaped and painted — but anything more creative?

Any suggestions for how to fix it onto your head/face? And getting a bit more involved – any ideas what to use for hair?

(The mask in the picture is