We’ve had an email from Caren:

I’m moving out of halls next week and getting rid of the posters I bought at the start of the year, am sick of looking at them!!

I could just put them in our green bin but wondered if you had any better suggestions?

If they’re still in good condition, you might want to see if your student union has a furniture recycling programme and if they’d accept them in that. I don’t know how widely spread the practise is but (my local uni) Leeds University Union has a scheme to collect unwanted furniture, crockery, pans and other homeware etc at the end of the year instead of it just been dumped in the rubbish in the rush to clear out for the summer. The stuff is then redistributed to those in need in the local community – while posters aren’t as critical as having a pan to cook your dinner in, they might help cheer up a depressing room for someone. Or you could just pass them on to someone directly using Freecycle.

Aside from that, most proper posters I’ve come across tend to be pretty heavy paper so could be used for all sorts of papercrafts. You could use a couple which are either similar or pleasantly contrasting to make a paper basket like I featured on Things To Do Today last week. They could also be used as heavy-duty wrapping paper or made into gift bags/envelopes.

Any other ideas?

(Oh, and we’ve covered laminated posters too.)

We’ve had a message on our Suggestions page from Ruti (who, incidentallty, have left hundreds of useful ideas all over the site over the last few days – thanks Ruti!):

What to do with laminated signs? I work in a 6th form College and various signs etc. are produced as A3 or A4 and laminated. However, eventually some details become out of date.

What could I do with these? there are only so many placemats / craft messy mats anyone could need!

For some reason, I can’t think of anything other than using white ones to make snowflake decorations – but the end of January is possibly a bit late for that type of thing.

So any other suggestions?

Here we are, again: New Year’s Eve.

The supermarket at the edge of our estate is selling giant packs of party poppers for 80p so come tomorrow, some households (and probably entire streets) will be covered in strings of paper and little empty plastic shells.

The obvious answer is not to get them in the first place but assuming they’ve already been popped, what are the options?

The paper is usually none too fancy – not glossy or heavily printed – so can go in the compost, or if you’ve got a lot of it, could be used as packaging for small items.

The plastic bits though – essentially a small cup with a (holed) stem at the bottom of it – aren’t quite so easily reusable. I mean, aside from fun hats for finger puppets. Can you think of anything else you could reuse them for?

Aside from that, do all have a wonderful New Year’s Eve and all the best for 2009. Oooh, and stay tuned for a vaguely Recycle This related announcement tomorrow :)

We’ve had an email from Peri, asking:

I have many old school textbooks that i don’t need any more. how do i recycle them cheaply?

Peri doesn’t give any more information about how many is “many” or how old is “old” but I imagine it’ll be more than would be accepted in the standard waste system and old enough that they’re either too tattered or too out-of-date for use by other children.

So any suggestions about what can be done with them?

(And on a related topic, anyone got fun ideas for ways to cheaply protect new textbooks in the future? I remember that sticky-backed plastic was the standard thing we used for textbooks and exercise books but wallpaper was also fairly hardy – and often gave a fun surface to doodle on – and one of my school friend’s used newspaper, specifically the pink-coloured Financial Times, which looks great.)

(Stock photo by lusi – and our first reuse: “world’s most uncomfortable pillow” ;) )

Next up in How Can I Recycle This’s Stationery Week theme, we’ve had an email from Agata:

Hi there! I’m still in High School and we use loads and loads of photocopies, mostly black&white.

I want to use them in some crafty way, like jewellery or house ornaments & decos, not just put them in paper savings bin.

Any ideas?

We’ve kinda already covered this before but because Agata wants crafty ideas, I thought I’d post it again to spark that sort of thing.

In the previous comments, ott suggestions papier mache, carrie “hobo notebooks” and Estelle gets her printshop to make stronger bound ones for her. I’ve also made beads from scrap paper in the past – I’ve used coloured paper but I bet the monotone print could make quite interesting beads too.

Any other crafty suggestions?

(Photo by float)

Other stationery items

• How can I make a notebook out of recycled materials?
• How can I reuse or recycle used envelopes?
• How can I reuse or recycle the spiral of a spiral bound notebook?
• How can I reuse or recycle hanging files?
• How can I reuse or recycle glue stick tubes?
• How can I reuse or recycle printer cartridges?