Shar left us a message on our “Suggest An Item” page:

I have increasing numbers of empty Purina one cat food bags.

Because they are plastic foil they are not accepted by my local council for recycling. [I’m in uk]

Bag has a zip lock. Sturdy item. Not sure what to do with them. I would gladly donate them to somewhere if I knew a place that re-used them.
size: 23 cm width / 27 cm height. Folds flat. At present these add to landfill. {cringes}

Any ideas how to recycle / re-use? [I do not have a garden or balcony, so no independent outdoor space]

We’ve asked about plastic pet food bags before but it seemed to be slanted towards big dog food bags – the size that can be used as grow bags or sealed rubbish/garbage bags. So any ideas for these smaller ones?

The zip lock element is interesting – making them easily water resistant if not full-on waterproof. I was reading the other day about the importance of having copies of all important paperwork (personal identification, bank details, insurance stuff) grouped together in a sealed easy-to-grab folder in case of an emergency – but someone else on the forum pointed out that such a file would be an identity thief’s dream — putting it in something like a couple of Purina bags would make it a lot less obvious. That would only use up one or two though – so any other suggestions?

(I’ve contacted Purina to see if they have any recycling advice: if they reply, I’ll add the info here.)

Over on the Really Good Life the other day, I listed all the consumables I used in one day and their packaging. I think it’s easy to become blind to things you routinely use and listing them helped me realise where I was creating unnecessary waste/exposing myself to unnecessary synthetic chemicals in my day to day life. I’m going to do the exercise again a few times over the next couple of weeks to get a more accurate broader picture (for example, on the first day, I didn’t do any household cleaning or laundry, or much cooking).

The reason I’m mentioning it here is two-fold — firstly, I thought it was a useful exercise and I’d recommend it anyone wanting to reduce. Secondly, I categorised my teabags as “probably not compostable” so possibly destined for landfill, which caused a bit of discussion in the comments (we do actually compost our teabags but not without a little hesitation). As I mentioned over there, Alice in Blogland looked into the issue a few years ago and found that teabags often include synthetic material in the heat sealed bit – the paper bag and the leaves are but not everyone wants synthetic materials in their compost heap. Without the heat sealed bit (typically food grade polypropylene), the bags wouldn’t stay sealed during manufacture and use.

It’s four years since Alice’s research though and the corporate world has made many green(washing) steps forward since then – so I thought it might be useful to check the situation again. I contacted ten tea companies and asked them whether I could compost their tea bags. Here are the responses:

Tetley

Tetley got back to me very, very quickly – which makes me think they get asked this question quite a lot:

The material used to make the actual tea bag is a mixture of mainly cellulose fibres and a small amount of polypropylene fibres to give the heat seal. Under normal composting conditions the cellulose fibres will break down, as will the tea, leaving the very small polypropylene fibres which are normally so small they are not seen. It does however take a reasonable amount of time to do this and really needs to be placed into a ‘proper’, established compost heap.

If it has not broken down it may be because:

• It has not been left long enough
• It hasn’t spent enough time at the centre of the heap where the temperature is higher
• It has been put on the garden, not on a compost heap
• It hasn’t been mixed with enough vegetable or organic matter
• The worm population is not high enough

The packs themselves are not compostable. We are working with our packaging suppliers on an ongoing basis as they are currently unable to supply us with fully biodegradable packaging that we can use for our packs. Comments like yours actually help us keep the pressure on our suppliers to produce a solution.

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I spotted this question on the Money Saving Expert forums earlier today:

I bought some ginger wine from sainsburys to try but it is far too sweet. I don’t want to waste it, but I can’t stand to drink it. Any ideas what else I can do with it?

Other forum posters suggested using a splash of it in brandy and hot water to make a winter cocktail, or with ice in lemonade for a summery one. Another suggestion is to use it to make a ginger-y trifle.

Any other ideas?

We’ve already covered photocopier paper and printer paper in general – and there are some great suggestions over there but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on what I can do with a stack of paper which has been printed on both sides.

I usually make scrap paper notebooks with any waste paper I get my hands on – the back of drafts, printing mistakes, junk mail, envelopes etc – but since these have been printed on both sides (a photocopying mistake by someone at work), they can’t go into my usual notebook/reuse pile.

They’re just regularly black and white copies so I don’t think they’ll be quite pretty enough for turning into beads or photo frames, and we don’t have a shredder so I can’t shred them for use as packaging/animal bedding either.

Anyone got any ideas or should I just send them for normal paper recycling?

Karen left a question on the Suggest an Item page:

Hi! I found out of date instant soup packets. Any ideas?

I presume by “out of date” Karen means its beyond the “best before” date – and if so, chances are, that soup is just fine and will be just fine for a good while after the marked date. (The UK government has announced they’re going to get rid of “best before” dates to reduce food waste – let people make their own judgements about whether stuff is fine to eat/drink or not, however long it is since it was produced. “Use by” dates on fresh food will remain but “best before” and “display until” [a stock rotation guide for shops] are disappearing. Anyway, back to Karen’s soup…)

If the soup is still good despite being “out of date”, then as well as being used as just soup, it could be used in place of stock in certain recipes – the flavour of the soup will obviously dictate where it can/should be used but it’s quite commonly used in casseroles and Google tells me that some people use (presumably beef-y, onion or mushroom) mixes to add flavour to meat when making hamburgers or tacos etc.

I know a lot of people reading this will prefer to make soups from scratch at home but does anyone have any other ideas for things Karen could do with the soup?