So after the chicken killing on Friday night, we spent Saturday playing with pig guts. It was an unusual weekend.

We were playing with hog parts because we were on a sausage making course at Old Sleningford Farm in North Yorkshire. It was a very interesting and fun course in a lovely location – I’d heartily recommend it to any sausage fans or just people wanting to try a new skill. Rachel & Martin, who run the course, are lovely – keeping us delightfully fed and watered the whole time we were mincing meat then squishing it into “casings”.

Rachel & Martin recently moved to using “ready spooled” casings for their sausages – they cost a little more but save a whole lot of time because they come “spooled” on narrow plastic tubes rather than in loose hanks (imagine how knotted hanks of yarn can get, how awkward it is to unravel them sometimes; now imagine that with pig guts instead of yarn). At one point during our group making 25kg of sausages, there were a number of the spools on the table – and Martin wondered aloud how they could be reused or recycled. Like a pork spattered recycling superhero, I suggested that I might know a friendly internet community who could come up with some ideas… :)

They’re about 30cm (1ft) and the hog casing ones are just over 1cm (half an inch) in diameter. I realise, like with chicken feathers, these aren’t something everyone will have to reuse/recycle – but any suggestions?

I guess suggestions of particularly relevance to small scale sausage producers/smallholders/foodies would be best as they’re the ones most likely to have the tubes in the first place.

We’ve had an email from Katy:

I work in a carpet store and we regularly get rid of big books of carpet and lino samples.My floor manager just throws them in the bin skip. Can they be recycled?

A lot of our reuses for carpet need it to be in large pieces, not just foot-square samples but some of the reuses for vinyl flooring/lino would work with smaller pieces – mats for under pet food bowls, wipe-clean cupboard/shelf lining or a patchwork of bright colours in a children’s play area/a semi-portable playmat.

Both can be recycled apparently too.

Any other suggestions?

My boyfriend John came up with an idea yesterday. We were just finishing up lunch when he said:

Darling beloved girlfriend of mine, have you featured old shopping trolleys on your terrifically awesome site Recycle This? Because there are currently three we’ll have to get rid of – the one half-buried in grass in the woodland next to our house and the two further down the stream in the woods proper (where all the rubbish collects at the bottom of a big hill and which we’re going to tidy up this summer). Your wonderful readers must be able to come up with some ideas for them and now, I’m going to make you a giant milkshake because I think you’re so great.

(I paraphrase slightly.)

Since they’re metal ones, they could just be scrapped but you know me, I’m much more about reuse than recycle.

By my guess, all the trolleys have been in their current place of residence for at least a couple of years so it’ll be both a pain to get them back to their original homes. I think they still technically belong to them, so if it’s obvious where they’re from, we might call to see if they’ll deal with it – but they’re not in a condition to be reused there – they’d probably just send them for scrap.

Any ideas?

(CCSA photo by de:benutzer:aeggy)

So far in our lunch–themed week, we’ve mostly focused on packed lunches and take-out – what about eating at cafes/restaurants?

After a stressful start to the day yesterday, John & I had treated ourselves to lunch at one of our favourite cafes, the Love Apple in Bradford – I had locally sourced pork, leek and ginger sausages with mash and homemade onion gravy & relish – yum! My plate was practically licked clean so no food waste here on my end but I wondered about the waste higher up the chain. On the way out, I asked the chef about whether they compost their kitchen waste and they do – it’s not a council service but they have someone to pick it up regularly. I’m going to check with all my regular haunts to see whether they compost their waste.

Do you know if your favourite cafes/restaurants compost their food waste? Do they do anything else to minimise waste?

Has anyone had any success asking food businesses to change their practices to minimise waste?