How can I reuse or recycle plastic mushroom tubs?
Amongst our friends, mushrooms are a bit like Marmite: people either LOVE them or hate them to the point of inventing fake allergies about them. John and I are firmly in the “love” category but have a bit of a problem with the plastic tubs they often come in because we go through so many – we try to buy loose mushrooms (preferably in a paper bag) wherever possible but still go through one or two of these boxes a week.
I used to use them under plants or to hold seedlings in the greenhouse, but the greenhouse is now used by a local stray cat as a home and I’ve got better saucers/pots around the house.
We also used to use them as a pre-compost-bin counter top bin in the kitchen – ideal for tea bags and the like – but now we’ve got a proper little bin with a lid for that sort of thing.
So what can we do with them instead?
The tubs – deep trays really – are quite thin plastic so not heavy duty for most reusing-as-storage purposes. I guess they could be used as dividers in drawers but we have a severe lack of drawers in this house (none in the kitchen, two in the living room, none in the bathroom, and just a chest of drawers in the bedroom) so everything is already in boxes on shelves.
Other suggestions?
(As for recycling, none of the tubs I’ve checked over the years have had a recognisable identification mark on the bottom – sigh – anyone know what they tend to be?)
Most of the time, we buy loose veg – less packaging, get to choose exact which items we want and how many etc etc. But every now and then, usually when we go shopping last thing and there is no choice at all, we have to buy it pre-packed.
