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?

After reading last week’s barbecue themed posts, Ali got in touch to ask about repairing a rusted up bbq:

The grill is rusty pretty much all over and there is a rust hole in the base too. My husband wants to throw it out and get another but I’d like to try fixing it first. Please give me some hope that the effort with a wire scrubber will be worth it!

A lot of barbecues at the cheaper end of the market have chrome-plated steel grills and once the chrome gets scratched or otherwise damaged, the exposed steel rusts really quickly. You might get all the rust off now but I’m not sure you’ll be able to keep it off in the future – anyone know any heat/food friendly way to protect it again? If it’s a cast iron grill – most expensive but not uncommon – then you should be able to de-rust it and protect it again like any cast iron pan/appliance.

As for the base, it depends on the size/location of the hole – a small one low down could be turned into a fat trap. Assuming it’s a kettle/barrel type bbq, you could strip it right back to metal (possibly worth doing all over in one go) and repaint it with a heat-proof metal paint (like stove paint) to reduce further rusting. However as someone who has spent far too long stripping metal recently, let me warn you, it’s not exactly a fun pastime.

If you don’t think it’s worth the effort to save this one, learn from this one’s untimely demise when you buy/care for your next one — look for one with a better grill or if it’s already a good one, protect it better in the first place, and don’t leave bbqs outside and uncovered in wet/moist weather.

Any further advice/suggestions?

The wonderful John B got in touch with my John the other day to ask if we could use a couple of sheep fleeces: someone he knows has been given the fleeces by a farmer client.

As I’ve just started spinning wool/yarn, the idea of a full fleece was appealing but also somewhat overwhelming – we said we’d take them if he’d been lumbered with them but otherwise it would be probably best to pass them onto someone else. Aside from spinning, we couldn’t really think of anything to do with them – then he suggested I ask on here for other uses.

We’ve covered man-made fleece jackets on here before but not the from-a-sheep variety. Apparently some people wash them and use them for insulation but there is a problem with moth-attacks.

What else can be done with them?

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?

Finishing up our impromptu barbecue themed week, I thought I’d run a post that is sure to get some people screaming “DON’T USE THEM AT ALL! USE REAL, REUSABLE PLATES!!” – and those people have a very good point. The first part of the 3Rs is Reduce and disposable paper plates are really unnecessary in most situations – and also usually really frustrating to eat off.

However, they’re still useful in some situations – for example, extraordinarily big outdoor parties, especially for clumsy kids or festivals etc – so it’s probably worth thinking about ways to reuse or recycle them for those times when they’re almost unavoidable.

Between food waste and the often synthetic wax/plastic coating used to make them moisture resistant, you don’t really want them near your compost heap. You can get paper plates designed to be composted afterwards though – some made from thick paper, some from palm fronds, others from a light bamboo – just scrape off any large amount of food waste that might cause a problem for your heap. On our post about waxed cups, someone said you can recycle them at tetrapak recycling facilities – I would if this is true of waxed paper plates too…

Any other suggestions/advice? Or ideas for alternatives?