We’ve had an email from Nichola:

My husband works in a cinema and has brought home a heap of old movie posters for me to recycle into something else. But what? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Given Nichola had a link to the wonderful Etsy in her email signature, the first ideas I had were crafty – borrowing Ecoist‘s idea of making them into handbags or wallets or making some fun art by weaving strips of different posters together. Any more crafty ideas?

Or what about more practical ones?

(Photo by AliciaYeah)

We’ve had an email from Scott Jones:

I have a bunch of old 45’s that are worthless and I feel awful just throwing them out. Any suggestions?

In my younger days, I worked at my local hospital radio and remember feeling the same way when they planned to dump a load of old records – both 7″ singles and full albums. I scavenged the ones that weren’t in good enough condition to charity shop and decorated storage boxes with them at home, particularly boxes to hold my own CD collection just for the juxtaposition of the usurped technology alongside the newer one.

I’ve also seen 45s turned into clocks – with the hands etc sticking through the hole in the middle – and ashtrays. If Scott doesn’t feel up to doing that type of thing, perhaps someone on his local Freecycle group might.

Has anyone got any other suggestions for reuses or for recycling them?

(Photo by andybahn)

We’ve had an email from Sue Taylor:

We’ve just moved to a much smaller retirement flat and we have hundreds of old holiday snaps and photos that none of the family want… You know the sort of thing, me in the pool, him in the pool, me on beach, him on beach etc etc yawn yawn…

Can they be recycled and if so who do I send them to?

We’ve got similar piles of photos – I’m quite the snapper, but not a very good one, and so have heaps and heaps of utterly blurred shots of cats quickly moving out of shot or ones of a sheep/band on a mountain/stage about two nautical miles away from me from the days before we went digital.

So any suggestions? I realise there are loads of potential craft projects for favourite photos but what about those ones that aren’t particularly favourites?

(Photo of photos by twasa)

We’ve had an email from Christina Biggs, who works for the Wildlife Trust.

I have 27 hard top yellow helmets which are out of date and need replacing according to health and safety regulations.

I run a waste and recycling classroom so ideally I would like to keep some of these on site and turn them into recycled products, I have thought about hanging baskets. What can these be recycled into? Any suggestions?

I was going to say hanging baskets (with a hole drilled in the bottom for drainage) but Christina beat me to it. Given they’re going to be pretty hard plastic, I don’t know how much they can be modified but I wonder if they could be made into fun birdboxes or something. Any other suggestions?

(Photo by brokenarts)

I was clearing out my jewellery box the other day and found a pile of really cheap stud earrings from the days before I realised anything less than stainless steel or sterling silver made my ears erupt in an explosion of pus and itchiness.

Because I’ve worn them all on at least a couple of occasions, I don’t know if they can be passed on to other people to wear as earrings – particularly because my reaction tends to have messed up the polish etc.

Some of them are quite cute so could be used – maybe – as push pins on a noticeboard – since we don’t have that many things that need noticeboarding, I wonder if anyone has any other suggestions.

Suggestions for the scroll (the back bit) are welcome too – I’d keep them as spares if it wasn’t for the aforementioned pus and itchiness.