We’ve had an email from Roger:

I was wondering Have you ever featured Till receipts on your website, I work in a supermarket and at least once a day i ‘run out’ of till receipt paper and have to replace it, But i’m sure there is at least 10% of the paper still on the roll, and if you add this up to all the tills in a store that’s a lot of wastage.

I like to keep mine to one side until a parent with small child come along and donate it as some colouring in paper, or use it to write class notes but i was wondering if you know of any recycling schemes for en mass collection or even if the paper is recyclable full stop (it has a glossy finish)?

There is also a sturdy plastic tube as well that you can glue together to make a pen holder, but there are only so many pens in the world.

When I used to work at supermarkets, back in the day, we used to keep the end of the rolls for notes – break times if nothing else – but the plastic rolls were just slung in the bin.

Receipt rolls used to all be thermal paper – like the old fax paper – and that can’t be recycled – but I wonder if that’s changing now (most of the supermarkets I’ve been in recently have new printers, to either do double-sided receipts or to print it all at the end) – anyone know? If they still are thermal paper, we’re be looking for reuses rather than recycling suggestions.

As for the sturdy plastic rolls, I don’t know of any recycling schemes off hand but I’ll contact some of the big chains to see if they do anything. Aside from the logistics of returning them, it doesn’t feel like there is anything in the way of stopping them being reused for the same purpose, since they don’t exactly change or get damaged during their roll. Anyone know of any schemes to reuse them? Or have any suggestions to reuse them elsewhere?

I regularly get emails from people involved with small charities asking how to set up recycling programs that will help them raise money for their cause.

Collection/recycling programs have been part of charity fundraising for a long time, but recently most seem to have moved from collecting large amounts of low value items (such as stamps or milk bottle tops) to collecting more valuable items (such as broken jewellery, mobile phones or toner cartridges). There is a lot of competition now for those type of items – not only between the charities but because it’s so easy for people to sell them online themselves – but it’s still a good income stream for certain charities.

So how can smaller charities set up their own recycling schemes?
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We’ve had an email from Joe, who works for a fancy handbag designer with a number of select boutiques around the UK:

I am trying to find a way to recycle these display Perspex props. We used them in lots of our London stores and have loads of them. Sadly they are mostly all damaged so I don’t think anybody else would want them.

I really don’t want to throw them away and am trying to find out what to do with them.

It is possible to recycle perspex (aka plexiglas, lucite or acrylic glass) but it’s not widely done post-consumer — I can only find details of a scheme which aimed at collecting offcuts & waste from perspex manufacturers. (In case anyone is interested, it was the Amari Recycling Initiative – does anyone know any post-consumer collection?)

Even damaged, the raw material might be usable by makers/crafters. Local art schools (or just the the art/design&tech depts of normal schools), hacker/maker groups (such as hackspaces) or scrapstores would probably all welcome the donation – and depending on the area/amount, might even be able to do a collection. Or someone on Freecycle/Freegle might want them too.

Any other suggestions for recycling/reusing them en masse? Or individual projects for small pieces of perspex?

The other day, John and I were hanging around a dumpster at the back of an ice cream parlour — as you do — and spotted it was full of 5ltr plastic ice cream tubs.

In our house, ice cream tubs are one of our favourite plastics to reuse – rectangular 1ltr square tubs are just the right size of storing leftovers and the 2ltr ones are useful for other storage stuff (three current reuses: we’ve got one for chicken scraps in the kitchen, I’ve got unplanted seeds in another and a third & fourth are used for batteries – one for new batteries, the other for batteries heading to recycling) – and they’re usually made from reasonably commonly recyclable types of plastic – the ones I’ve got here are Polypropylene, resin code 5. To be honest, I was quite surprised that this ice cream parlour didn’t have a recycling scheme in place since it surely generated a fair number every day.

Next time we’re in the environs, I’m tempted to ask if I can have a dozen or so to reuse. They were about 30cm (1ft) or so long, about 15cm/6″ tall and the same wide. I’ve got loads of office and craft stuff that need to be stored better and a row of those on a shelf might be a neat way to do it.

They’d also work on the thin counter in our porch as planters for growing salad etc – although I am trying to move away from growing stuff in plastic. Storage and planters – my reuse ideas for just about everything at the moment, which I think gives a rather telling glance into our life ;)

What about other reuses?

We’ve had an email from Andy:

I work for an Events company based in Newmarket, Suffolk, and I have got over 1000 mugs, which as come back from an event and we need to recycle.

Do you know where I can do this?

We’ve got plenty of home & garden reuses for old/broken crockery but I suspect most people would find it hard to reuse over 1000 mugs as plant pots or for kids painting sessions – so we’re looking for mass reuse, redistribution or recycling into something more useful than landfill.

As with the other recent substantial amount of new stuff query, it might be worth contacting a local homeless shelter or soup kitchen, or another similar charity that could use them en masse.

As an absolute last resort instead of landfill, they could probably be crushed down for rubble/hardcore – but it would obviously be better to reuse them before that.

Any other suggestions?

(Oh and event organisers, check out our “how can I reduce the waste I receive at conferences etc?” post – reduce in the first place so you’re not stuck looking for reuse and recycling ideas afterwards!)