Following on from the discussion we had the other week about whether people would prefer less packaging or more packaging that was easier to reuse/recycle, I’ve been wondering: have you ever stopped buying something because of its packaging?

One of the purposes of packaging is to attract us to buy the product over all the other options on the shelf – but has a company’s packaging decision actually turned you away from the item?

Perhaps they use shrink wrap plastic unnecessarily, or perhaps they swapped from something easily recyclable to something almost impossible to recycle (eg Kitkat moving from foil & paper to shiny plastic), or perhaps it was like the joint of beef which is potentially going to cost Sainsburys a lot of money next month – just too much of everything.

What’s put you off?

Frequent commenter on Recycle This, Linda, the bookstorebabe, emailed to tell us about a recipe for using up apple peel and cores:

I just read this on Craftster, about making jelly from the peels and cores of apples. Seems like a nice way to use something that otherwise would be composted. Especially if you’re making apple pie or such like. No, I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan on it! And I follow your website, so just thought I’d pass along the link. The first page has the recipe, the second page has some info I didn’t know about how jelly jells and such.

You have a lovely website – full of so many useful ideas!

Great link, thanks! I love recipes that use up the bits of food usually thrown in the compost bin – especially at the moment when so many people are cooking up gluts of apples.

Another reuse for apple peels is to make apple cider vinegar – either using a wild fermentation method or using cultivated winemaker’s yeast.

We also feed chopped apple peel/cores to our chickens – an indirect way of putting them in the compost really.

Any other suggestions? What do you do with your peels and cores?

We’ve had an email from Scott, asking:

Is there any use for old sparkplugs?

As someone who barely knows what a sparkplug looks like let alone does, I’m not really in a position to answer this question. Google tells me that they can be cleaned up again but it’s not recommended (although disclaimer: all the people talking about it are performance/engine obsessives, so they might be pushing for more than the average person).

Does anyone else know if they can be revamp and reused?

Or what about other reuses for them? Anyone incorporated them into any other creations?

And what about recycling? Can they be recycled for their component parts and if so, where/how?

(Photo by Gerald Zuckier)

We’ve kinda touched on this topic before when talking about reusing and recycling disposable razors but that was a long time ago and I thought it might be worth bringing it up again.

As when we were talking about it in 2007, I still use disposable razors occasionally – perhaps one a month since I’m still not particularly hairy or bothered, and use a rechargable electric razor for my legs. In the grand scale of things, it’s not exactly a lot of waste but it still bugs me to use anything that’s designed to be disposable.

(The electric one obviously uses power but other than that, they last a good while – the batteries on my rechargable ones tend to die every 3/4 years, but John’s got a mains powered one that will last years and years – his dad’s has been going for 20+ years apparently.)

On the old post, some people said they’d given up disposable razors (or more commonly disposable razor blades attached to a reusable handle) in favour of a traditional straight razor (aka cut-throat razor) – and they’ve never looked back. However, they’re only good for smooth/tight skin – not very useful for armpits, or the back of legs.

So what are the other options? What do you do?

Over on Twitter, fairygirl25 (aka Elizabeth) asked us:

how can u reuse plastic wrap after u use it once in the microwave?

We don’t use plastic wrap in the microwave so I’m not sure how it changes it to stop you being able to reuse it like ordinary plastic wrap/cling film/saran wrap again. Could anyone shed any light on that? Do you reuse plastic wrap?

(Instead of plastic wrap, we use lids or off-set plates on top of bowls for steaming/heat retention. That seems to work for everything we do in there – but admittedly that’s not much. If you have a microwave, what do you use?)

As for recycling, plastic wrap is usually hard to recycle as it’s PVC based (resin code 3) but some stuff is now LDPE (resin code 4) so may be accepted in some recycling facilities. Check on the packaging to find out what you’ve got and ask your local authorities for their advice.