We’ve had an email from Di:

Several brands of tea I buy come in little waxy paper packets with a foil lining. Do you know if this can go straight into the recycling bin?

I think it’ll be a no regarding the recycling bin. Mixed materials – such as paper & plastic, plastic & metal, and paper & foil – tend to be a bit of a nightmare when it comes to recycling — and waxed paper can also be problematic to recycle as well (apparently it can be recycled alongside tetrapak but not regular paper).

It might be worth contacting the manufacturers to see if they have any suggestions or have any method of recycling their offcuts – if they do, they might be able to take back packaging and recycle it at the same time.

Any suggestions for reuses?

We’ve had an email from Roger:

Work as getting rid of a coffee machine it got free from a nescafe rep, and i thought of instead of letting it go to the bin i would rescue it and give it a home. I got it home and realised that it requires these expensive disposable coffee pods to work (the reason work got rid) so I am asking if any of the bloggers/readers of this page own one of these machines and if they have discovered methods of refilling these with filter coffee. Or if no one can help me with this nice ideas on how to reuse them, they are unfortunately made of many materials and hard to recycle. i don’t want to be tied to the evil nescafe brand so any hints or tips would be immense.

I don’t think I can put into words how much those machines annoy me – all the excessive packaging just to force you to keep buying their product. Seriously grrrr! Grrrrr! The one my last place of work had was even worse than the pod things (which seem to be aluminium) – it was a plastic bag thing with a plastic nozzle for attaching to the machine: two minutes of convenience versus an eternity in landfill, smashing, just smashing.

Anyway, there seem to be some reuse hacks out there for the pods but some people complain that the coffee isn’t quite as good and/or it might break the machine. If the machine is going to get ditched anyway, I suspect it’s worth a shot.

Any other suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Alison:

I have loads of the washing liquid balls that come with washing liquid such as Persil. It seems a shame to throw them away if I could use them for something useful.

Like with measuring spoons in baby formula and allen keys at Ikea, it’s annoying when manufacturers include stuff by default with every purchase even though, presumably, most of their customers will already have a spoon, key or liquid ball from their last pack. There are products out there that don’t include such waste – EthicalConsumer has a list of the greenest laundry products, taking into account packaging, alongside animal testing and chemical make-up of the product itself.

But what about the balls Alison already has at home?

The washing stuff we use doesn’t come with balls but I’ve got a few very old ones in my laundry cupboard for measuring out the different powders and potions, and transporting them over to the washing machine (I’d probably use way too much if I tipped it directly into the drawer). They’d also be useful as scoops/measures for other cleaning products.

Away from housework, the balls with the flat bottoms could be used as paint caddies during kids’ (or grown-ups’) art sessions or turned into mini-sewing kits/pin cushions: fit it with a cute, cushioned lid for the pin cushion, and pins & other supplies could be kept inside.

Any other suggestions?

We’ve had another suggestion from Leigh of the scarves and name-tags. She wonders what she can do with

those hideous foam things that are supposed to keep drinks cold.

I have like 8 of them but i never drink pop or beer.

They’re one of those annoying promotional things like bottle openers which tend to appear in your possession before you have a chance to say “no, thanks” to the person giving them out.

I’d keep one or two around to use for their insulating properties – keeping a bottle of water in your bag cold (and not leaking condensation everywhere) or if they’re big enough, using around too-hot coffee cups. But what can Leigh do with the rest?

Any ideas?

Rhiannon left a message on our suggestions page:

I was wondering if you have any ideas for an empty Tabasco sauce bottle? They are so pretty, but due to the very narrow neck (so that you can only shake out small droplets at a time) it is unsuitable for storing anything that I can think of.

We’ve covered narrow-necked glass bottles on here before – beer bottles or wine bottles and the like, but Tabasco sauce bottles are that bit narrower than most.

I’ve seen the teeny-tiny single serve Tabasco sauce bottle used as jewellery but the normal size bottles are a little too big for that. ;)

They might be useful for liquids that need to be added drop-by-drop – food colouring for example, but that type of thing tends to come in a little bottle with a dropper thing anyway.

The largest standard size (150ml ish?) bottle would make a cute single-stem vase (if I recall correctly, they tend to have a plastic dropper thing in the top but that can usually be pulled out) but the standard size bottle would be too small for everything bar the absolutely thinnest stem.

So suggestions?