We’ve had an email from Diana:

What can I do with the plastic pots my moisturizers and hand creams come in? They’re round plastic with screw lids but because they’ve had chemical creams in them, I don’t want to use them for food.

Why not check if you can bulk buy your favourite moisturiser/hand cream and refill the existing pots rather than buying new ones each time?

You could also make your own creams – or give them (possibly via Freecycle/Freegle) to someone who does.

As for other reuses, they’d be perfect for storing small things like beads/button or nails/screws — and would give you an instant maraca-type instrument too ;) . They’re also pretty water tight so might be useful for small emergency kits – you could probably fit a pack of matches, a few tea lights and maybe a mini LED torch/flashlight in there.

Other suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Ashley Sue, asking:

What is a good sustainable use of 40 lb plastic empty kitty litter containers? I’ve got a bunch of them. not recyclable in our area :(

We get our cat litter in paper sacks so I’m not quite sure whether Ashley Sue means bucket-like tubs like this one or jug-style containers like these. The link on the former already give one potential re-use — for growing veg — and we’ve got a few of the latter type that originally held dry cat food which we use for other cat-related purposes – either mixing up two flavours of dry cat food to dilute one they don’t particularly like, for holding litter when the paper bag splits or if a bulk-bought sack of food/litter needs decanting so the smaller member of our household (ie me) can lift it. I’m sure a well-washed out litter jug could be used for all these things too.

Any other (cat or non-cat) suggestions though?

(Oh, and if you’re interested, we’ve already covered recycling/composting the litter itself. Also, can I just say how delighted I am that it’s spring and the cats are leaving the house for the first time in months – it’s been a long, long poopy winter.)

I do astound myself sometimes: we’ve featured over 300 items on the site so far, from the common place to the less common and the downright weird, but we’ve not yet covered yogurt pots.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t eat the stuff (it’s too closely connected with fruit in my mind and fruit = ick) or perhaps it’s because it’s one of those things that seems so ripe for reuse that it seems too obvious to feature it – but aside from plant pots for seedlings or using as a paint pot, I can’t actually think of that much to do with them – particularly the little tiny kids’ ones.

So what do you do with them?

(Photo by LotusHead)

Because we so often get caught up doing other things (and/or are lazy), John and I have take-out about once a week. Sometimes this is pizza, as I’ve mentioned before, but recently we discovered a new Chinese place open up nearby and we have been partaking in its various offerings.

Long gone are the days of foil tubs and cardboard tops – everyone in the take-out world seems to use microwaveable plastic lidded containers these days. While I have worries about storing food in plastic for any length of time, we kept the first few rounds of tubs to use for leftovers from our own culinary exploits and the like. But now we have more tubs & lids than we know what to do with – we have more than enough for use in the kitchen and around the house – and storage is getting to be a problem.

We can’t doorstep-recycle them because they’re Polypropylene (type 5) and our council only recycles types 1, 2 and 4 (as seems standard) – and I don’t know anywhere else that recycles them. I doubt the take-out places could take them back for their re-use for hygiene reasons – and ditto anywhere else that might find them useful but lacks sterilising equipment.

So any suggestions? Recycling ideas or uses outside the normal ones around the home (food tubs in the kitchen; nuts/bolts/screws in the cellar; under plants..)?