How can I reuse or recycle foam shelf liners?
We’ve had an email from Estelle, saying:
My local supermarket uses these plasticky foam sheets to line their fruit and veg shelves to protect produce from getting bruised. They simply throw them away in the evening and lay out fresh ones the following day. What a waste!
I have been salvaging them, as I’m packing up to move house. If they are clean (no sticky fruit smears), which they usually are (as the fruit is packaged in yet more plastic), I use them to cushion items to be posted, instead of buying a padded envelope. What other ideas are out there?
They look pretty similar the thin packing foam you get with Ikea furniture to stop them scratching in transit. There are a number of insulating ideas on there – so I guess Estelle’s sheets could be used in the same way.
Any other suggestions though?
I usually collect them and wait to use them to pack fragile objects I want to gift to somebody or to send by snail-mail. Somebody makes flowers with soft paper: you can use this for very soft flowers or animals made by folding and sewing them just like a kind of origami. A useful way of using them is to put one of them inside a pot in the cupboard and then put inside it a smaller one: they will not collide and it is good for not making noise and also not to scratch them if they are in teflon.
This is it, by now.
You could probably stack a bunch of them to use as a seat cushion, putting the sticky ones together and a clean one on the outside… loosely handsew to keep it together and it could be perfect for a picnic or sporting event.
if you had a hard board and a piece of fabric… you could layer them like you might for the seat cushion idea… just not so mant. staple them onto the board, then staple the fabric on top… voila… new bulletin board…
Offer them on Craig’s list. An e-bay seller would probably love to get their hands on them. We had a toy boat building and floating event at our gardens and some of the kids attached these foam sheets to their boats for added floatation, it worked. Maybe you could save thousands and build a raft:).
Hey,
What about cutting christmas shapes from them and putting the to one side for decorating the xmas tree later on. Or saving them as a “snow” base for the tree or for nativity scenes etc.
I’ve used them when moving, they are great to place between good dishes to keep them from breakage and scratches.
make headgear for your little ones… wrap, wrap, tape…
j/k…
u cn make roses out of it……