We’ve had an email from Ellie:

I’ve found about half a dozen opened bottles of soda water and tonic water in the back of our drinks cupboard from last Christmas (I don’t know why there is so many!) They’re flat now but I know you can use soda water for stain removal so I wondered if you knew of any ways I can use them up.

Soda water (aka Club Soda) is a useful stain remover for liquid spills but I’ve heard that part of it is how the fizz “lifts” the stain – so I’m not sure it’ll be still as useful for that.

Some sources recommend soda water as a mineral-rich water for plants – flat stuff would still work for that – or, similarly, tonic water can help keep cut flowers fresh (used one part tonic to two parts tap water).

One other thing about tonic water – the quinine in it causes it to glow in the dark. We’ve obviously missed Halloween now but it lend itself to some fun decoration ideas…

Any other ideas for how to use up those fizz-less drinks?

Quentin has been in touch with this great idea:

It always surprises me that these days many bicycles are supplied without mudguards. Anyhow, I’ve discovered for my children’s bicycles, that a very satisfactory set of mudguards can be made from a couple of 4 pint milk cartons, 5 x 15cm tie wraps and 8 staples.

A photograph of this arrangement can be seen here:

and I’m sure that you they could be decorated in some way.

I’d be delighted if you were to share this inventive reuse of the milk carton with your viewers and it might save many a grateful mother from having to wash the muddy stripes of the backs of shirts and trousers.

Great reuse idea! I bet if they were painted a solid colour, it would be hard to tell what they’re made from.

Anyone else done anything similar?

We’ve had an email from Roger:

I was wondering Have you ever featured Till receipts on your website, I work in a supermarket and at least once a day i ‘run out’ of till receipt paper and have to replace it, But i’m sure there is at least 10% of the paper still on the roll, and if you add this up to all the tills in a store that’s a lot of wastage.

I like to keep mine to one side until a parent with small child come along and donate it as some colouring in paper, or use it to write class notes but i was wondering if you know of any recycling schemes for en mass collection or even if the paper is recyclable full stop (it has a glossy finish)?

There is also a sturdy plastic tube as well that you can glue together to make a pen holder, but there are only so many pens in the world.

When I used to work at supermarkets, back in the day, we used to keep the end of the rolls for notes – break times if nothing else – but the plastic rolls were just slung in the bin.

Receipt rolls used to all be thermal paper – like the old fax paper – and that can’t be recycled – but I wonder if that’s changing now (most of the supermarkets I’ve been in recently have new printers, to either do double-sided receipts or to print it all at the end) – anyone know? If they still are thermal paper, we’re be looking for reuses rather than recycling suggestions.

As for the sturdy plastic rolls, I don’t know of any recycling schemes off hand but I’ll contact some of the big chains to see if they do anything. Aside from the logistics of returning them, it doesn’t feel like there is anything in the way of stopping them being reused for the same purpose, since they don’t exactly change or get damaged during their roll. Anyone know of any schemes to reuse them? Or have any suggestions to reuse them elsewhere?

We’ve had an email from Simon:

We’ve got two old electric kettles in our garage, one works but is very grimy, the other doesn’t work, not sure why. Can we do anything with them?

Electric kettles are covered under the WEEE Directive so in theory, you should be able to send them back to their manufacturer for recycling. In practise though, this isn’t always easy to do – but most, if not all, councils in the UK have some provision for small appliance recycling at household waste centres. Some even do periodic doorstep collection of electrical items so do check on your local situation.

It might be worth seeing if the dirty working one can be rescued though – it might just need some elbow grease and a good de-scaling. If you don’t have a use for it, someone on your local Freecycle/Freegle group might be able to use it either for general kettle use (if they’re happy with how it cleans up) or for non-food purposes.

Fun/pretty old kettles – or vintage-style new ones – might also have some appeal as a quirky planter.

Any other reuses or better ways to recycle them?

Our lovely old cat Boron has had the last of his teeth taken out this week – he’s always been prone to gum problems and while gummy, he seems happier now his mouth isn’t so inflamed.

Our vet says he might still be able to have dry food – which has made up the bulk of his diet for most of his life – but once he (Boron, not the vet) knows we’ll give him more wet food if it’s too painful/awkward for him to eat biscuits, I suspect he’ll made demands for that all the time.

When we had four cats, we used to feed them cat food from cans – a can per day between the four of them as a treat, alongside unlimited dry biscuits – but after losing two of them, cans were resulting in too much food waste and we had to switch onto pouches. It was a struggle for me, giving up easy-to-recycle cans in favour of annoying just-about-impossible pouches — a toss up between packaging waste and food waste.

Now Boron is going to be eating more wet food, we might be justified in moving back onto cans – or, sigh, we might just end up generating more pouches.

I’ve contacted a couple of cat food companies to see what they advise doing with the pouches – I’ll update this post when I hear back from them – but in the meantime, do you use pet food pouches?

Do you have any reuses or recycling ideas for them?