This one came to me in my sleep the other night – the waxed paper type wrapping you get on some loaves of sliced bread. I obsessed about it until morning so I wouldn’t forget to write it down and let me tell you, I had some weird packaging related dreams that night.

ANYWAY, waxed paper bread packaging. We’ve had bread bags and the film stuff from fancy fresh supermarket baked bread but not the waxed paper option. It’s not as common as it used to be but some brands still use it across the board.

The wrapping is not currently recyclable but carefully opened, it can be opened out into a decent size wipeable sheet. It can then be reused for it’s original purpose again and again – wrapping around homemade bread or sandwiches – but has anyone done anything more involved with it?

From a reduce point of view, you could make you own packaging-free bread or source packaging-free bread from a local baker/independent store. If you have to rely on supermarket but also have decent plastic recycling facilities in your area, you might prefer to buy bread in easy-to-recycle plastic bags – that seems to call back to our discussion the other week, about whether or not you choose to buy things with more packaging or in this case packaging which on the face of it seems worse for the environment (paper versus plastic) but is actually easier to recycle.

We’ve had an email from Brennan:

After a quick search on Recycle This, I noticed nothing popped up for paper-wax cups that are popular at fast food restaurants or 7-11 stores.

I was wondering if you had any recommendations on how to recycle or reuse these cups since local curb side programs refuse to collect them due to the wax lining inside.

Yes, we’ve covered plastic cups, sippy cups and even cardboard cup sleeves but not those oh so common waxed paper cups – it’s funny the things I forget about sometimes :)

There is, of course, a big argument for avoiding getting them in the first place but sometimes it’s pretty much unavoidable – so what can be done with them?

I know regular waxed paper can be used to lubricate things around the home, lightly protect wooden surfaces and help prevent rust/grime on garden tools etc – I wonder if the wax coating on cups is waxy/transferable enough for that… Anyone know?