We had a question on the ‘Suggest an Item’ page a while ago which I seem to have missed, so here it is. Sylvia asked:

How can I recycle old badges? plastic and metal.

Actually recycling them may be difficult as they tend to be mixed materials – metal and potentially multiple types of plastic but they’re perfect for passing on to someone else. A lot of people collect badges – doesn’t matter what’s on them or actually, the more obscure the better – so either offer them to a local charity/op shop or if you’ve got enough of them to make it worthwhile, offer them on your local Freecycle/Freegle or even eBay/Etsy/Folksy.

A question for badge makers – can old badges be recovered using badge making machine?

Any other ideas?

(Photo by Miss Frannington)

Earlier this week, someone on my local Freecycle group asked if anyone had any old plastic guttering/drainpipes because she wanted to cut it in half to use for seedlings. I thought that was a pretty genius idea but wondered what else could be done with it…

There is a section of old drainpipe in the woods next to our house too – I haven’t investigated it too closely yet but I think it’s an old metal one, so not as easily hackable but still potentially useful.

Any suggestions?

I can’t believe we’ve not featured this already. We’ve covered stale bread, bread bag tags, how to make a bread bin recycling old stuff, and what to do with an old bread machine pan but not the bags that pre-sliced loaves come in.

Most pre-wrapped loaves (in the UK at least) come in LDPE bags – low-density polyethylene, ie, plastic number 4. They can be doorstep recycled in some places (check your local guidelines) and can be included with carrier bags at some collection spots.

But how can they be reused first? The most simple reuse is, of course, as a sandwich bag – but anything more interesting or creative?

(Photo by Richard George)

It’s been snowy here for three weeks now and we’re making sure there is always a stock of seeds & nuts available for our local wildlife population. We know that it can be dangerous feeding wildlife too regularly – they become reliant on you and “forget” to find their own food supply, which is a problem if you move away/go away – but for the time being, while their food supply is under a chilly blanket, we’re helping out.

I bought a bird feeder a couple of year ago – a simple wood/metal grill thing – and it was fine in our old house. Here though, the squirrels gnawed the wood and ripped a whole in the metal on Day 1, so I clearly need to make something sturdier. (I don’t mind feeding the squirrels, especially at the moment, but would rather they didn’t break stuff.)

We’ve got some offcuts of wood – small flat pieces of pine, salvaged from a joiner – which I could yoink from the stove’s wood pile and use to make a little box/tray with a roof (probably a hanging one, rather than a table because of the cats). There is always the simple milk bottle option or juice bottles too. Coming at it from another angle, coconut shells or hard gourd skins can be used for homemade fat feeders, and those that plan ahead purposely grow sunflowers during the summer to feed their feather friends during the winter.

Speaking of the actual food, don’t just resort to shop-bought seed mixes – Mrs Green from My Zero Waste has pulled together a great list of waste foods that can help the local wildlife.

How else can you make bird feeders reusing and recycling random stuff?

And what do you feed the birds once you’ve got your feeder in place?

• Now the rush to the holidays is out of the way, it’s a perfect time to catch up with fixing and mending stuff around the home and those dozens of jumpers snagged by cats over the first properly chilly bit of the season (… just me?). The Craft blog recently had a roundup of some fab repair projects to get fixing juices flowing.
• MJ over at Making Do with the Not So New posted about a great scheme someone has set up in her area – community give and take chests. Perfect for things not suitable for a charity shop (such as food or once-used bottles of bathroom supplies) or things too small to warrant a Freecycle/Freegle posting.
• MJ also linked to webecca’s yarn winder (swifts) tutorials – made re-using random household objects such as clothes pegs and coathangers.
• Crafting a Green World’s Becky linked to a video tutorial on making cute little handbags from the covers of old, damaged hardback books.
• Craftstylish’s Cal has written a great how-to on replacing a coat lining to breath new life into a tattered vintage coat. The same idea can also be extended to making a coat that bit warmer for winter.
• Finally, reuse old drinking straws and expanded foam packaging to make handy storage for seed beads. It would work for actual seeds too – easy to sprinkle them out at planting time.

(Photo by Diane Gilleland for Craft)