We’ve had a message from Leanne, saying:

I have an MP3 Player that no longer works and 2 digital cameras with cracked screens. Both still work but you cannot view the object as you are taking the photo. Do you know anywhere I can recycle these?

I’d be tempted to put the digital cameras on my local Freecycle group because someone may be able to use them for something that doesn’t need a screen. If my (admittedly incredibly geeky) friendship group is anything to go by, there are always people that want to fix a camera to a kite/dog/radio-controlled helicopter and might be able to use a screenless one instead of risking their brand new 8megapixel camera or whatever.

Aside from that, in the UK (and the rest of the EU), I believe these types of things are covered by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive so the shop where you bought them may have a “bring back scheme” to take care of the recycling – or your local household tip might have a special bin for that sort of thing.

Any further advice or reuse suggestions?

(Photo by nkzs)

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’d been over to the HQ of Ruby-on-Rails ISP BrightBox and discovered a load of computer parts packaging.

As well as the plastic trays that we featured the other week, there were a number of sheets of cardboard-backed bumpy foam – which is apparently called waffle foam but, if the picture’s not clear, it’s the stuff that people usually use for soundproofing.

These sheets aren’t that big about 15cm by 45cm so you’d need a LOT to do any serious soundproofing and could be kept for future packaging purposes – but I suspect they might have so more fun reuses.

The cardboard on the back limits it to dry/non-fire related things – I guess it could be pulled off but that seems to provide it with a lot of structure.

Any suggestions?

Lucia of JBLarts has sent us a bit of an obscure one:

Such a strange thing, you may say, but I have a good quantity of meteorological lattice balloons: any suggestion on what doing of them, apart fulling them with air to make huge balls to play with in a big garden? Huge snow/lattice-men?

I tried to cut the lattice to use it in some other way, but it was not so easy to maintain the form of the cut pieces.

Any ideas?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so I can’t really offer any suggestions. Anyone else got any ideas?

(Oh, and on the subject of balloons: we’ve covered deflated helium ones in the past too.)

We’ve had an email from Chris, saying:

I searched the archives, but didn’t find any mention of what to do with breadmaker pans. Mine had the teflon coating peeling off, so I got a new one. I am looking into where to find a scrap metal place, but any other suggestions would be appreciated…

As I might have mentioned before, we have rather eager scrap metal collectors around here so if it was us, we’d probably just have to think about getting rid of it and a telepathic scrap metaler would appear on our doorstep a second later. I suspect our local tip (household waste collection site) also has a scrap metal bin.

But we’re all about reuses here so anyone got any other suggestions? Most breadmaker pans I’ve seen have an annoying extrusion on the bottom (where the mechanics click in) and a short stick thing in the middle on the inside (where you put the turning blades) so they don’t automatically lend themselves to the usual plant pot etc options.

Thoughts?

We’ve had an email from Kate about a pretty specific thing but the bigger question might be more generally useful:

Can anyone tell me if you can recycle fibre glass? Have 20 fibreglass units used to house the scoring screens in a tenpin bowling centre. Units are old and not resellable but would like to get rid of. Also tubes from the monitors need to go as well?

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

A random bit of Googling suggests that fibreglass can be recycled but I haven’t found any thing definite or any specific companies that do it. Anyone know any details?

As for the tubes, I don’t know if they’re similar but we’ve discussed standard tube lighting before – but the general idea there seems to be safe disposal rather than recycling. Any other thoughts about that?