So, another year comes to an end this weekend and that’ll mean that a whole load of 2006 diaries and calendars will the heading to the rubbish heap.

If you have calendars with pretty pictures on, I guess you can cut out the picture to keep for future use/enjoyment, but what about other calendars now that you no longer care about the dentist appointment you had last August or your reminder to buy milk in May?

And what about all those used desk diaries and pocket diaries?

And on a bigger scale, what about those year planners hung on the wall of every office?

(Photo by ask)

In a completely un-me moment of organised and forward planning, I was looking for a pen the other day to write something on shopping list. I turned to the pot of random pens that I put together in another completely un-me moment of organised and forward planning. Unfortunately given the long time-lapse between those two periods, all the ink in all those pens had completely dried up. I ended up scratching letter-shaped holes in the shopping list instead. Useful.

So what can I do with all those old pens? Can I rescue them? Can I reuse their skins? Most of them are cheap (usually promotional) biros but there are also some felt tip types. Any suggestions?

(Photo by nazreth)

I know most water cooler bottles already go back to the supplier for reuse or recycling (she says, hopefully) but what about ideas for those ones that get lost along the way?

John rescued one from a skip near his work the other day and brought it home thinking we could use it as a cloche or something in the garden – but since we already have lots of drinks bottles set aside for that purpose, I’m trying to think of something else to do with it instead.

The plastic is so solid it seems a shame to cut it up but there isn’t a lid so I can’t think what we would bottle in it.

Any suggestions?

Last week, I wrote a bit of a rant about how much I hate it when pencil leads are broken (HATE) and asked what I could do with the formerly-useful pencils.

But I didn’t think about the resultant sharpenings.

If the pencil is wood, I guess they can be composted – right?

But what about previously-foam-cup pencils that can’t be composted?

I know it seems a really small thing and almost isn’t worth caring about, but any suggestions?

I suspect this is another recycle rather than reuse thing but again, I’m not sure how to go about recycling them.

Until recently, we didn’t have a printer at home and when I was at work, there was a helpful box in reception or the photocopying room that mystically took away my old ink/toner cartridges and turned them into money or unicorns or something.

As my description of the work-recycling process might indicate, I don’t know where those cartridges ended up so now we have a printer at home, I have a couple of cartridges and don’t know what to do with them. We’ve got a HP black and white laser printer and an Epson colour one (both second- or third- hand, I might add).

A quick search turns up a variety of options but aside from Oxfam who I suspect aren’t lying, I don’t know if the companies do with the money/cartridges as they say they will. And what about the Epson ink cartridges that Oxfam can’t take?

Any suggestions?

(Photo by aarenyes)