Every now and then I realise I’ve had some great ideas & links sent to my email but not shared them with you yet – this is one of those times!

First up, Vernon got into touch to tell us about his plastic bottle creations. He says he’s been making them for 15 years and sent me pictures of a wind twirler and a flower made from old bottles – but this bird was my favourite – such a fun character!


And speaking of creative characters, Mario Caicedo Lange sent us a link to his Flickr account featuring the “arts, props and crafts” he’s made from recycled materials. He makes little robot style creatures – with many of his recent onesdoubling up as plant pots!


Next, Malcolm was in touch to tell us about Juzi jewellery – chunky beads made from recycled magazines by two self-supporting cooperatives in Kenya. Turning colourful magazines paper into beads is a fun way to recycle them yourself – but if you’re not a crafty sort, then this seems a great way to get the look and help others at the same time.


Agy on Green Issues Singaporeemailed to say she’d created two new lampshades – one from an old tshirt, the other from an old computer keyboard. Two very different looks but both fun!

Thanks for all the emails guys!

My brother and I got our first proper PC in the mid-1990s.

We could do word processing on it, basic drawing and DTP – lots of serious grown-up stuff that justified it as a (second-hand) purchase to our parents … but we still mostly used it for playing games.

Our favourite game, for a long while, was a pinball game which used the ALT keys to work the flippers. Before long, the worn out ALT keys fell off. So we changed the game’s controls to use the CTRL keys instead. And ditto. And so on, until we rendered our first computer keyboard pretty much useless.

I don’t go in for such abusive gaming these days but as we live on our computers now, (my boyfriend) John and I still end up with broken keyboards from time to time, or just spare ones when one comes free with a new computer or something.

When they’re still in working order, we give them away to friends or family in need, or the local computer recycling place, but any suggestions of what we can do with broken ones, or their parts? Any recycling/upcycling ideas?

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