A few weeks ago I was at the HQ of BrightBox, a Ruby-on-Rails hosting company/ISP, and they’d just taken delivery of a huge new computer server thing (apologies for getting overly technical there).

Anyway, all the hard discs for it (and there were loads) were packaged up separately so there was a mountain of packaging by the time they’d got it all sorted.

As well as tonnes of corrugated cardboard and the foam packaging stuff I’ll feature next week, they got loads of these little solid moulded plastic trays – dummy drives – and needless to say, my first thoughts were “what a waste!” and “how could I recycle them?”

They would be absolutely ideal underneath plant pots if there weren’t two little holes at one end. I guess I could plug them with something and perhaps paint them at the same time to make them nice for under plants – but even as prolific as our spider plants are, I think I’d still be hard pushed to use them all.

So any suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Nathalie, telling us about the fab ottoman she made from an old washing machine drum (links includes full instructions). She also links to another site where one has been turned into a floor lamp – very cool.

Involving less crafts, I’ve also seen them used as planters in allotments (since the holes let excess water drain away) and an outside toy bin in a garden – so they’re obviously versatile little chaps but has anyone else got any other suggestions?

(Image courtesy of Nathalie and Esprit Cabane)

(Oh, and we got a mention on Zaproot yesterday – a cool eco-show. If you’re already here, you already know about us of course but still, it’s nice to be mentioned.)

We’ve had an email from Joanna, asking:

My (soft) X-box dance mat is slightly broken – I think the connection from one of the pads is busted. Any ideas how I can reuse or recycle it?

I’ve only ever seen the solid ones so I don’t know how thick/malleable the soft ones are but if it’s reasonably thin and not as wrinkled like the one in the picture, it might make a cool “rug” for a dance fan’s bedroom or could be used as a fun surface protector on a desk. Anyone with more knowledge of them got any better ideas?

I’d also be interested in hearing if anyone has any suggestions for the solid ones too – I suspect that there will be a lot dumped on the scrap heap (literally) when either the dancer goes off the game or when the console is upgraded and the new pad doesn’t work with the old machine (like happens with joysticks and game pads). Any suggestions?

(Photo by PiaCarrot)

My beloved laptop died last week. It’s actually been dying for about a year but my patience/unwillingness to buy a new one combined with a few last ditch life-extending efforts by John meant it only shuffled off the.. electro-magnetic coil last week.

John bought it five years ago for work and (ab)used it for a couple of years, then I inherited it and have used it as my main PC ever since – and given I work on it all day, every day, it’s really quite impressive that it’s lasted this long.

But now we’ve decided to finally lay it to rest. The power supply (which has been replaced once before) and batteries are utterly shot, meaning it frequently lost power when I was in the middle of my work – and not just once but over and over again until the planets align and it decided it’d accept/store power again. The screen’s casing is physically damaged after an accident a few years ago and something either to do with that or the graphics card meant there were constantly glitches appearing and disappearing from the screen. The airport (wireless) hasn’t worked for years and last time we opened it up it seemed to have melted (??!) and the paint has worn off the edges of the keyboard bit, leaving electric-shock inflicting bare metal. I was happy to live with the latter things – using a wire instead of wireless, wearing a jumper to prevent the shocks – but the power thing became unworkable. There is only so many times something can turn on then off then on then off then on then off… before you want to throw it through a window.

We’re going to see if anyone in our local geeky world can use it for its non-broken parts but if it’s not any use to them, I don’t know what else to do with it. Our usual computer recycling place refurbishes old PCs but I suspect, given this is an Apple and so uses all sorts of proprietary Apple connectors and whatnot, it’ll be too much hassle/expense to fix it.

Any suggestions though?

(Photo by John from when it was shiny and (quite) new, and we didn’t have piles of crap on our shelves)

(Also apologies for the couple of hours downtime that we had yesterday – our server was being moved or something.)

We’ve had an email from Judith:

My electric steam iron gave up the ghost last year. I was told it was not economical to repair it and had to buy a new one pretty quickly. The old one has been sitting in the cupboard ever since as I hate to landfill it.

Any ideas?

Yes, irons are in the same “annoying cheaper to replace than fix” category with toasters, kettles and numerous other household electricals. Grrr.

As a minimum, in the UK, you can take it along to your local household waste collection spot for proper disposal and recycling where possible and for proper disposal where that’s not an option – many retailers also have “take-back” schemes when you buy your replacement from them.

But what about reuses? If it’s not too heavy, it might be suitable for children playing house – but any other ideas?

(Worrying photo by lusi – people iron towels???)