Victoria, the ska-core princess who makes fun jewellery out of buttons, wire and the like, has left us a question on our Suggest-An-Item page:

Any ideas for recycling use glow sticks?
The type you might get at raves and festivals with the non-toxic chemicals that create a reaction when the stick is ’snapped’.
*high five*

*high five* back to you ;)

While there is an obvious potential case for reduction in their use at festivals etc, according to the very detailed Wikipedia article on them, there are a lot of practical uses too because they’re a waterproof light source that doesn’t require electricity or create sparks, so even if every raver gave them up, they’d still be plenty hanging around.

I suspect actually recycling them will be difficult because of the chemical mix but anyone know more about them?

As for reuses, apparently “dyes used in glow sticks usually exhibit fluorescence when exposed to ultraviolet radiation. Therefore even a spent glow stick will shine under a black light” – perhaps they could be used to make art or as guide lines on walls etc in places with UV lighting?

Any other suggestions?

Regular readers of Recycle This (and my personal Twitter feed) may have spotted me talking about an impending house move for the last few months. To be specific, it took five months from our offer being accepted to getting the keys in our hands but the latter finally, FINALLY, happened last Friday afternoon.

We’ve not moved in yet because there is some damp-proofing work needed in our office and since we both largely work from home, it would be good (from logistical and breathing points of view) to have that sorted before we move over. We’re also using this short window to do other jobs that’ll be easier without us, all our stuff and cats there. Expect lots of “How can I…” style questions about house moving, renovations and decorating from me over the next few weeks ;)

First up, I’d like to make a sewing table/bench. There is, wonderfully, enough space for me to have dedicated craft station in the spare room for sewing etc – no more having to use the floor for sewing and pattern cutting, joy!

I think it would be good to have a drop-leaf/expandable table style worktop so it might be worth keeping an eye out for an old/broken dining table for that. Someone has also suggested covering a worksurface with lino/vinyl floor covering to protect it so I guess I should keep an eye out for that too. I already use some old (skip-dived) CD shelves for yarn and am tempted to yoink the shoe rack John doesn’t use for instant shelving – two layers of shoeboxes or ice-cream tubs for holding stuff.

Any other suggestions for useful features or things to make it with? What have you used? What about for storage of those countless tools and random supplies?

John is very taken with the idea of getting an exercise ball to use when he wants a change from his desk chair in our new office. He’s used them at other people’s desks and he likes the idea of bouncing while he works.

I’ve always poo-poohed the idea because we have cats who like to stretch up against furniture then dig in their very long, very sharp claws – not exactly compatible with inflatable furniture – but a friend told us his cat did that too and it wasn’t a problem because the PVC plastic is so thick. Then suddenly, mysterious, he found himself sitting considerably lower in the chair thanks to a claw-sized slow puncture. Claws one, inflatable thing nil.

So we won’t be getting on now but what are the options for reusing an old exercise ball? A single puncture or two could probably be repaired with a bicycle puncture repair kit but if the problem is more systemic, it might not be worth repair – so what else can be done with it?

I suspect with a bit of handiwork, they could still be used as seats – filled with beanbag balls instead of air – but I wonder if the sliced up “skin” could be used for anything else too…

We’ve had a “clever reuse” email from Terri:

I’ve been using old washing powder boxes instead of box files. I get the big flip top lid boxes and they’re really sturdy and stackable. Much better than recycling the cardboard and buying new boxes!

Great idea, Terri.

Some powders are very perfumed or smell strongly of chemicals so you’d probably have to be careful about storing certain things in there but they’ll be perfect for things .. you won’t be licking ;)

We’ve asked about reducing the amount of washing powder packaging used but anyone got any other ideas for reusing the boxes?

We helped a friend of ours move out of his house at the weekend. He’s going away to India for a few months and needed to get out of his rented house before heading off. Because he’d left everything to the last minute, he told us on Friday that he was just going to “bin everything” he wasn’t keeping, prompting my green nerve to twitch violently and me to volunteer our services to take it all to a local charity shop instead. (If I didn’t know better, I would swear he did it on purpose…)

We ended up taking four full carloads of furniture, clothes, books and bits & bobs to the charity shop and wombled another two bulging carloads for ourselves – including a nearly new bike which we gave to our neighbour and a big box of random food items from his kitchen cupboard. We’ll use most of it in time (there were 27 cans of baked beans, 16 cans of tuna and 5 jars of horseradish sauce – it’ll take quite some time!) but it made me realise that while the charity shop we were visiting took nearly everything, they didn’t take food – so what could be done with them if we didn’t want them?

I know that sometimes schools, churches or community groups have canned food drives at certain times of the year – often around this time of the year, as harvest festivals – but what about when they’re not collecting? I suspect shelters would welcome food stuffs but probably more along the lines of those 27 cans of baked beans rather than the single cans of lots of different diverse foods (including, almost other things, a can of reindeer meat) – things that lead themselves to mass catering.

There is so much food wasted at the moment – in-date food that people have bought on a buy one, get one frees but then not liked the first one – that there must be better ways to collect and redistribute it.

Do any charity shops collect it? Are there any organisations that oversee collection and redistribution, leaving collection bins in public places (like some animal shelters have bins for pet food donations supermarkets)? Do you have any other recommendations for how to pass it on?

(The photo is of the 27 cans of baked beans and the single can of reindeer meat. I wasn’t joking.)