While we’ve covered food cans in general before, Danielle emailed asking tuna cans in particular:

i have so many, what can i do with them?

There’s a wide variety of uses for tuna cans:

I know some people use them to make “buddy burner” candles and you can use them as candle holders too – but make sure you put a bit of sand in the bottom first to absorb the heat from the candle rather than it heating the metal.

Some people clean them up and use them as “cookie cutters” for making large biscuits/cookies, and because everything in this house gets commandeered for the purpose sooner or later, I’ve used them as drip saucers under plant pots (pull the label off and leave them silver for an industrial look, paint them to make them look prettier – shiny white or cream gloss gives a pseudo-vintage enamel look).

Since they’re essentially just a small pot with a low centre of gravity, they’re useful for holding small quantities of paint/glue. Or as students have been known to do – use them as makeshift ashtrays.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo by TanjaS)

I’ll let you guess what we had for dinner last night ;)

We were packing away the papers afterwards and John commented on how much paper was going to waste – it was quite a lot, with spots of grease soaked through to the out-most layer.

Our friend George thinks it’s wonderful for lighting fires/stoves but given it’s almost midsummer, it’s not exactly stove lighting weather.

It would compost – I’m always wary about adding anything fishy/meaty to our compost bin though in case it attracts vermin. (The oil used at our local fish’n’chip place is vegetable oil but it must smell of a bit of fish because the cats love the papers, even when the food has gone.)

Any other reuses?

From a reduce point of view, I could take along a reusable container and ask them to use that instead – the people at our local place are great, so I’m sure they would do it. Any advice on what type of container to use? A completely sealed one might make everything a bit sweaty on the way home. A reusable box with a towel/cloth on top?

(In case this is very much a UK-centric question, I’ll explain a bit: when we get our stereotypical fish ‘n’ chips, they usually come wrapped in paper. It’s typically a “greaseproof” sheet or pocket underneath the food, then all wrapped in a few big sheets of cheap paper. This used to be newspaper but now it tends to be purpose-bought white paper (often blank newsprint). Some places use expanded foam clam shells or waxed cardboard boxes but the majority of dedicated fish’n’chip places, in the north at least, still use paper.)

(CCA photo by jem)

After writing Wednesday’s post about deli counter plastic wrapping, I got thinking about pre-packaged cooked meat packaging and what a pain they are to reuse or recycle.

The ones I’m thinking of are used in the UK for sliced meats such as ham or roast beef/chicken, “continental sausages” (ie chorizo, salami etc), or wafer thin water-injected animal shavings (mmm!). The packaging has a semi-rigid shallow plastic tray and is covered with heat sealed plastic film. According to the misc pack of salami we have the in the fridge, the packing “currently isn’t recyclable (but because we care about the environment, we’re working on it)”. (Uh huh).

There is obviously a reduce option – although depending on the alternative provision, you might end up with as much plastic anyway.

Most packs only contain a single layer or a few slices max so the plastic tray is a little too shallow to use in the usual plastic tray ways – a saucer under plant pots, a paint palette for budding Monets – so are there any other ways they could be reused instead?

We’ve had an email from Iona:

The deli counter at Sainsburys insists on wrapping every item in its own yards of plastic wrap including multiple plastic sheets and then the plastic bag. Can they be recycled with carrier bags?

Plastic bags are usually made from polyethylene – which can be high-density (HDPE – resin code 2) or low-density (LDPE – resin code 4). I’m not certain – so please correct me if I’m wrong – but I believe the plastic bags from food counters are LDPE. LDPE is collected for recycling in many areas but you might want to check with your local council to see if you can add it to your doorstep recycling, or if you’re using a carrier bag drop at a supermarket, see if there is any information on the box about that sort of thing.

Before thinking about reuses and recycling ideas though, try to reduce if you can. Ask them to use a single sheet if they must use one at all or swap to non-deli items with more recyclable packaging – although that’s easier said than done because so many refrigerator items from supermarkets come in hard to recycle plastic. (Our little independent butcher in Leeds used as much plastic as any supermarket counter I’ve ever seen too.) I know some people (Mrs Green from My Zero Waste for example) take reusable tubs for the deli people to use instead – I suspect stores’ policies will vary on whether or not they let people do this but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Has anyone any advice on getting the fresh food counter people to cut back on the amount of plastic or use tubs you’ve brought from home?

And are there any reuse ideas for plastic sheets etc?

We’ve had an email from Jan C:

Is there anything I can do with carpet freshener bottles? The ones with the holes in the top for shaking. It’s too chemical perfumed for anything I want to shake out (like flour.)

There is a strong Reduce angle here – like many strongly perfumed items, you’re just introducing chemicals to mask the scent and it’s not only not cleaner, you’ve just introduced a whole new bunch of chemicals into your environment/lungs. (If you really want to use it, why not make your own from bicarb of soda? Add a few drops of a pleasant smelling essential oil if you want a scent – although you have to leave it to dry if you do that.)

There are other cleaning products with shakers too – bleach powder is one that immediately springs to mind and while it’s still really-bad-for-the-environment bleach, it’s arguably slightly greener to use powder than liquid bleach as the water has been shipped around considerably more efficiently (in pipes to the point of use rather than on a lorry).

As Jan says, you probably wouldn’t want to use such chemically-saturated/perfumed shakers for, say, dusting your cakes with icing sugar – but are there other reuses for them? If the holes are quite big, you could use it for lightly distributing rock salt/grit in the winter (rather than dumping it in large splats as is common when pouring from a bag). You could also use them for distributing grass seed.

Any other suggestions?