Joan left a question on the “suggest an item” stage:

A deceased good friend’s photo albums need to be disposed of. Mainly of family, friends and her cats, loathed to just chuck them in a bin, other than that, what do I do? Help…..

I’m sorry to hear about your friend, Joan.

The Photos

I’m presuming no one wants to keep them as they are – but if you have access to a scanner and a spare couple of hours, I’d recommend scanning them into a computer before you do anything with them. People may be more interested in having a copy of/access to the digital ones – you could store them online with something like Dropbox (which gives you 2GB of online storage space for free), and you might feel more free to doing something with them if you know there is a copy available if you ever want to see them again. Friends and family may want to keep a few hardcopies of special pictures too.

Because of how the paper is treated to be photographic paper, it can’t usually be recycled – the chemicals (including polythene) clog up paper recycling facilities. However, old (black and white/painted or very dated vintage colour) pictures are desirable for art/craft reuses – if you’re not the arty/crafty sort yourself, you could try giving them away via Freecycle/Freegle. We’ve addressed the question of snapshot photos before so some of those suggestions may inspire some ideas.

The Photo Albums

Because of the mix of paper/card with plastic, they’re not easily recyclable – but if the photos have been removed for scanning, the photo albums could be reclaimed and reused. Re-cover it with pretty paper or thin fabric, if you want to give it a new look.

If you don’t have a large album-worthy collection of photos yourself, you can use them for other things – flip-style albums are great for recipes or clippings. I know some frugal people in the US use them for keeping their coupons in order and I teach a couple of drama classes and use flip albums to store my exercises/lesson plan ideas — lots of possible organisational uses.

If they’re still in good condition and you don’t want to use them, then charity shops will take them – or you could sell them on eBay.

Any other ideas for either the photos or the albums?

We’ve had an email from Uta Bauer asking about recycling old photographs and negatives.

We covered pictures that back on the site earlier in the year but didn’t really include negatives in that.

So how about those negatives? I’m sure they could be used in some really fun craft projects using light but don’t have any specific suggestions – anyone else made anything cool with them?

We’ve had an email from Sue Taylor:

We’ve just moved to a much smaller retirement flat and we have hundreds of old holiday snaps and photos that none of the family want… You know the sort of thing, me in the pool, him in the pool, me on beach, him on beach etc etc yawn yawn…

Can they be recycled and if so who do I send them to?

We’ve got similar piles of photos – I’m quite the snapper, but not a very good one, and so have heaps and heaps of utterly blurred shots of cats quickly moving out of shot or ones of a sheep/band on a mountain/stage about two nautical miles away from me from the days before we went digital.

So any suggestions? I realise there are loads of potential craft projects for favourite photos but what about those ones that aren’t particularly favourites?

(Photo of photos by twasa)