Is there a word for when you’re window-shopping skips? I was skip-gazing (?) around the corner the other day and as well as having a mighty fine looking pallet in there (yoiiiiink), there were several old paint roller trays flung on top.

Compared to rollers, paint trays are super easy to clean (especially if you line them with a carrier bag first) so I don’t know why they were thrown out. There were a couple of emulsion ones and a couple of smaller gloss ones.

We’ve got plenty of trays for painting ourselves but I guess I could rinse them off and offer them on Freecycle or something.

As for reuses, in the past, I’ve used old roller trays as drip trays under seedlings (the deep part is more useful if you’re carrying them around, they have a tendency to wobble off the shelf bit – but that’s fine catching run off if it’s in one place). What else can be done with them?

(First, sorry for the lack of posts for the last two days – it was my birthday on Tuesday and so I’ve had two days off. Back to the grindstone now though ;) )

We’ve had an email from Su:

Sorry about this, as it’s not about recycling or repairing, but I thought some like-minded soul may be able to help!

My query relates to electric kettles. In my house they last, on average about 15 months. I have tried expensive, cheap, stainless steel, plastic, cordless… I’m not sure why they don’t last since I only use them for their intended purpose ie: boiling water, but modern kettles don’t seem to be made to be repaired.

I have been using a stove top kettle on my electric cooker for about a year now, BUT in a morning it’s almost half an hour before I get my pot of tea (and I NEED my tea in a morning!). Plus, I believe that although electric kettles use a lot of power, they use less than the cooker. So my point is this, I want to buy a new kettle, but it needs to be a) energy efficient, b) repairable & c) preferably, as ethical as possible. All ideas gratefully received!

We go through cycles of this – our electric kettle develops some annoying fault which John tries but fails to fix and we decide that electric kettles are a wasteful scam. Then we drag our stove top kettle out of storage and clean it off, only to get incredibly frustrated at how long it takes to boil on the stove and eventually snapping and buying another electric kettle. I think our kettles last about 2 years – so slightly longer than Su’s – but still, a brief enough lifespan to be very wasteful.

So any ideas for Su? There are a number of electric kettles that bill themselves as being eco-friendly – has anyone had any experience of those? Are there any other options?

(Photo by chris2k)

We’ve had an email from Toni:

Do you know of any charities that collect used body piercing jewellery? Everyone seems to want gold and these aren’t gold they’re steel. Your earring suggestions don’t apply either because they’re ring and bars.

Marie Curie’s jewellery recycling scheme claims to accept anything – real or costume, broken or working – so I would have thought from a melt-it-down-for-scrap point of view, they’d accept them.

I’ve heard of some body piercers reusing barbells – they have to sterilised them anyway before use and some items are only used for a couple of weeks before being replaced (for example, borrowing from my own experience, the longer bars used for the few swollen weeks after tongue piercings). But I’d be dubious about that, even sterilised, because of how even small nicks & scratches on the jewellery can increase the risk of infection.

Any better reuses or definite recycling ideas for barbells and CBRs (captive bead rings)? What about plugs and tunnels? Anyone done any fun upcycling/repurposing with them?

We’ve had an email from Andi:

Can I Compost vitamin tablets? I have two jars in date but have gone moist from the air. What can I do with the bottles?

We’ve covered pill bottles already on the site but the vitamin question is a good one – and I’m not sure of the answer. I suspect it might be “best not”. We’re instructed to always dispose of expired medicines very carefully to avoid risk to the public/wild animals, and to avoid contamination of the environment/water supply. While dietary supplements are generally a lot more benign, there is still some risk, for example, iron can be surprisingly toxic to children, and presumably small animals. I’m not suggesting that many children will hunt around in your compost bin for a feast of pills but the payoff doesn’t really seem worth the risk. I may be wrong though.

I’m also not sure if there will be many reuses for them…

Any suggestions for stopping them going soggy in the first place?

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?