Good friend of Recycle This Petra has been in touch again:

Here I am again with another item that you hopefully find interesting enough to put on your website.

Still cleaning my cupboards :-) , I now found several out-of-date bottles of contact lens liquid. It’s the storage and insertion liquid, not the soapy cleaning stuff, although it says that it can also be used for cleaning. I can’t find any ingredients, except that it contains certain additives for conservation.

Does anyone know if there’s anything I can do with it. I don’t wear my lenses any more due to too dry eyes, so this is what is left.

As I’m a glasses wearer, I’ve not had enough experience with the liquid to know what it could be used for – I do know that those solutions are sometimes just saline, but I don’t know if that’s the case with Petra’s stash.

Has anyone else had leftover contact lens solution? What did you do with it? Once they’re out of date, can they be used for other not-so-critical things? And if so, what?

As it’s such an unknown area to me, I’d love to hear your ideas for this!

Over on the Suggest an Item page, Valerey explained:

I work in the medical profession and I open and use medications all the time. I was wondering is there any way to reuse the flip seals on the top of the single use vials. I have a quite a few and need some suggestions….thanks.

I’m not a medical person so I’m not familiar with the caps – but after a bit of time with Google Image search, I think I know what Valerey means – the flat top bit in that picture (if it’s not that, please do let me know). It’s a disc with a protruding centre, which seals into the top of the bottle. Some seem to have “flip off” stamped into them too, which seems a little redundant as it’s inside the bottle but gives them a bit of fun attitude…! :)

People who know what they are: do you know if the caps come into contact with the medication at all, or is there another seal in between? If it does come into contact with the medication, that will probably limit the potential reuses – they look like they could be used as coins in a toy till/cash register but you probably wouldn’t want kids getting their hands on them if they had the slightest traces of medicines on them.

And for those already familiar with them, any suggestions?

UPDATED TO ADD: lots of people have been asking for pictures of flip off cap creations for inspiration. Here are some that I can find – if anyone knows of any more examples, let me know and I’ll add them to my list:

• Dottie’s shop on Etsy
• A wedding bouquet made from them!
• FlowerReels4U’s shop on Etsy
• Flower blooms for ID cards
• Ms Sara’s rings & earrings

We’ve had an email from Helen:

Hi, I cleared out my work’s first aid kit this morning and found all the bandages are out of date (no longer guaranteed sterile). We’re replacing them for safety reasons but I wondered what we could do with the old ones since they’re still in their packages just no longer sterile.

If it was at home, I’d be tempted to keep them around for times when sterility isn’t an issue (for example, just providing support to a sprain or something) but I can understand in the workplace, where numerous people might be using the kit, that might cause confusion and problems later on.

I remember using a number of different shaped bandages when I did my first aider training – I wonder if there are any groups that could use them for that purpose (am I right in thinking Scouts/Guides do some basic first aid training? Could they use them?).

As for a sillier idea, someone could use them to make an awesome mummy costume next Halloween.

Any other suggestions? Is re-sterilising them a possibility (at an industrial level if not a household one)?