We’ve had an email from Amy:

Hi all! I’ve got a collection of watches which no longer work. They were all cheapy plastic fashion ones (I know, I know, naughty me! I’m much better about that sort of thing now!) so it’s not like they’ll have much value second hand. Will charity shops want them or will they just throw them away?

I guess it depends how they’re broken – if they just need a new battery, they’re probably be more willing than if it’s a broken and not-easily-replaceable strap or cracked face. Anyone work in a charity shop and able to advise further?

Aside from passing it on through a charity shop or Freecycle or whatever, how about stripping it for parts and making some steampunk-style jewellery?

Any other suggestions?

(Photo of a really quite nice watch by vierdrie)

We’ve had an email from Kate:

i want to make a pair of slippers for my boyfriend for his birthday. he’s really into green stuff and i’m broke (back at uni!) so i thought i’d make them but don’t know where to start. any ideas?!

After making booties for our niece Mia a few years ago, I got excited about making supersized booties for us but never got around to it, and that’s more knitting than recycling anyway (unless you’ve reclaimed the wool). (On that topic, I also have this “dorm boots” pattern in my “growing and eating and making” bookmarks folder from when I was looking for a pattern for Mia.)

Away from knitting, you can make them out of towels or misc woollen fabric (like a blanket or an old jumper).

John also made himself some “outside slippers” from a pair of old comfortable but battered trainers – we wear socks around the house but he needed something he could slip-on for running out to the bin or going into the sometimes-damp cellar. He just chopped the back out of the shoes to make mules and sewed up the rough edge.

Any other suggestions? Or hints on how to get started?

(Photo by prototype7)

Lyndall’s second (well, third) query is about festival wrist bands.

particularly the plastic ones for i would have thought the cloth and paper ones could go into a compost bin.

In my festival going days, at this point in the “summer”, I’d have a wristful of bands and I’d wear them until they got too grimy or fell off of their own accord (back in those days, the Reading Festival bands were the best – understated cool – I wore those for months). But once they’d left my wrists, I just dumped them in my “memories” suitcase because I’m too lazy to scrap book.

Nowadays similar wrist bands seem to be handed out for every little thing, just as a longer-lasting hand stamp thing – at conferences, fairgrounds and last week, I saw them being used on a city tour pub crawl thing in Berlin.

So aside from scrapbooking the memory, what else can be done with them? If you had a big stash – perhaps collected off your friends – could you weave them into something?

(Oh, and re: composting the cloth and paper ones – only natural fabrics (such as cotton or silk) should be composted and I suspect bands would more likely be synthetic for durability/cost reasons. Heavily printed paper can cause problems too (the ink can be toxic) so don’t compost them if they’re all inked-up or coated in plastic.)

(Photo by hakore)

Lyndall, of March’s bread tag query, has got a couple more “how can I recycle this?”es for us. Firstly, following on from Monday’s high heeled shoe question:

does anyone have any bright ideas about recycling old crocs? mine now have holes in the bottom of them! would love to get them resoled if possible, but have not looked into this as yet and it’s generally not cheap.

It looks like Crocs themselves have a recycling scheme – old shoes are grounded up to make up (20% of) new ‘SolesUnited’ shoes for distribution in developing countries — but it seems only for US people at the moment (or people who are willing to pay the postage for their old shoes to reach the US). (They also have spare part schemes for replacing broken straps or rivets, which wouldn’t solve Lyndall’s worn-sole problem but might help save a few pairs from being dumped.)

So any other suggestions? I guess the good old standby of gardening shoes is out if they’re leaky but I suspect the lightness of the foam might be useful for something.

(Photo by sugarbeatl)

We’ve had an email from Naomi:

I’ve got loads of old shoes that I no longer wear but they’re not suitable for use as “dirty shoes” in the garden or whatever because they’re got stiletto heels. What can I do with them?

We’ve covered old shoes before but I guess high heels are a bit different because they’re only good for aerating the lawn ;)

Of course the obvious suggestions are to pass them onto someone who’ll wear them – through Freecycle, local charity shops, eBay etc – or put them into a shoe recycling scheme so the materials can be reused and recycled.

But what about other ideas?

(Photo by kymmie_xox)