How can I reuse or recycle plastic mushroom tubs?
Amongst our friends, mushrooms are a bit like Marmite: people either LOVE them or hate them to the point of inventing fake allergies about them. John and I are firmly in the “love” category but have a bit of a problem with the plastic tubs they often come in because we go through so many – we try to buy loose mushrooms (preferably in a paper bag) wherever possible but still go through one or two of these boxes a week.
I used to use them under plants or to hold seedlings in the greenhouse, but the greenhouse is now used by a local stray cat as a home and I’ve got better saucers/pots around the house.
We also used to use them as a pre-compost-bin counter top bin in the kitchen – ideal for tea bags and the like – but now we’ve got a proper little bin with a lid for that sort of thing.
So what can we do with them instead?
The tubs – deep trays really – are quite thin plastic so not heavy duty for most reusing-as-storage purposes. I guess they could be used as dividers in drawers but we have a severe lack of drawers in this house (none in the kitchen, two in the living room, none in the bathroom, and just a chest of drawers in the bedroom) so everything is already in boxes on shelves.
Other suggestions?
(As for recycling, none of the tubs I’ve checked over the years have had a recognisable identification mark on the bottom – sigh – anyone know what they tend to be?)