We’ve had an email from Lieze:

how can i recycle an old jerry can in a creative way ?

Lieze doesn’t say whether it’s an old school pressed steel one or a newfangled plastic one – or whether it’s been used as a fuel container or a water one.

My first thought for anything container shaped at the moment is “plant pot” (has anyone else had a scarily successful germination rate for their seedlings this year?!) but I think I’d be hesitant to use an old fuel canister for that, even if I could work out a way to make the opening bigger. Anyway, that’s not particularly creative so … I don’t know – maybe if you can slice off the front off a metal one, you could attach hinges and make it into a fun storage cabinet. (I love the idea of it being painted bright pink for the juxtaposition with the cold, industrial metal ;) )

Any other suggestions?

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

We’ve had an email from Jan C:

Is there anything I can do with carpet freshener bottles? The ones with the holes in the top for shaking. It’s too chemical perfumed for anything I want to shake out (like flour.)

There is a strong Reduce angle here – like many strongly perfumed items, you’re just introducing chemicals to mask the scent and it’s not only not cleaner, you’ve just introduced a whole new bunch of chemicals into your environment/lungs. (If you really want to use it, why not make your own from bicarb of soda? Add a few drops of a pleasant smelling essential oil if you want a scent – although you have to leave it to dry if you do that.)

There are other cleaning products with shakers too – bleach powder is one that immediately springs to mind and while it’s still really-bad-for-the-environment bleach, it’s arguably slightly greener to use powder than liquid bleach as the water has been shipped around considerably more efficiently (in pipes to the point of use rather than on a lorry).

As Jan says, you probably wouldn’t want to use such chemically-saturated/perfumed shakers for, say, dusting your cakes with icing sugar – but are there other reuses for them? If the holes are quite big, you could use it for lightly distributing rock salt/grit in the winter (rather than dumping it in large splats as is common when pouring from a bag). You could also use them for distributing grass seed.

Any other suggestions?

I’ve been getting more and more interested in wild food lately – we’ve been trying different things while walking the dog in the woods behind our house and on Sunday, we went on a wonderful Wild Food Foray organised by Slow Food West Yorkshire. Led by medical herbalist Jesper Launder, we spent just over three hours pottering around the River Wharfe just north of Barden Bridge and tasted more than a dozen different plants, and also went crayfishing (for nasty invasive signal crayfish) – which was a lot of fun. (I’m going to do a full write up of all the things we tasted on my personal blog soon.)

Anyway, long & short of it is, between wild food collecting and the hopefully bountiful harvest from our garden, a trug would be really useful for carrying stuff back up to the house – a Sussex trug style basket like the one pictured rather than those big rubbery plastic bins with handles. Up to now, I’ve mostly just either taken so few leaves that I could easily carry them in my hands or used shopping bags/a colander when I’ve headed down to get a larger amount of, say, wild garlic – but a trug would be useful for carrying large amounts of longer things, letting them lie flat instead of crunching them up.

One recycled trug idea I’ve seen is made using an old car tyre – the tyre is cut into sections (sixths?) and rope handles are attached, et voila! instant trug. I’ve also seen old fruit/veg boxes made into trugs with addition of a central handle.

But before I start hacking up John’s spare, I thought it might be interesting to hear if anyone has any other suggestions. Might something like paper mache even work? It doesn’t need to be that strong and I guess it could be varnished/painted enough to make it waterproof enough (it wouldn’t be sitting out in the rain but the plants might be damp/dewy.)

Any other ideas?

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!)

Not ones to rush, we’re finally getting some carpet fitted in the room we started renovating when we first bought this house last September.

Now this might be carpet sales person nonsense but all the guides we’ve read about choosing a carpet say that the carpet will last a lot longer and wear better if you replace the underlay at the same time. The underlay in the room in question is a very good make apparently but judging by the carpet, has been there for at least 20 years. The old carpet is clearly worn along certain paths and we’re guessing even though it’s harder to see it, the underlay is similarly worn – so we’ve listened to the advice and are replacing it.

Now of course that means we know have both carpet and carpet underlay to get rid of – doubling the amount of stuff to reuse or recycle.

We’ve already covered old carpet in the past and I will certainly keep some of the carpet for those reuses – insulating the floor of our greenhouse for one, and I think some of the carpet might be suitable for making into doormats etc. But what can I do with the underlay?

This is a lot thicker and floppier than the stuff used under wooden or laminate floors. I’m tempted to say it’s foam rubber but I’m not sure it is, and I can’t find out any more about it online, other than it uses “advanced polymers”.

Any suggestions? And any advice on whether the “you have to get new underlay” thing is true or bunk?

(Photo by Haxxah and KraZug)