The other week when I asked how people make their home baked goods last longer, Dani suggested using little packets of silica gel crystals to a biscuit jar to draw the moisture away from the munchables. (I’ve heard rice can be used in the same way.)

Dani’s comment got me thinking about other ways that those little sachets of silica gel could be reused. Dani gets hers from bottles of vitamins but they are often included with other things too – I’ve had them in shoes or leather bags/purses, or thrown in with deliveries of dried food items.

Care should be taken when reusing these pouches – because silica gel crystals can cause irritation to the repository and digestive tracts – but their moisture absorbing qualities are very useful: they can absorb up to 40% of its own weight in water vapour.

Looking around the web, people suggest using them to protect sensitive items from getting damp: important papers, seeds, camera/electronic equipment – even jewellery (the moisture adds to tarnish on silver). You can also use silica gel crystals to as cat litter – but I imagine you’d need a helluva lot of these little sachets to fill a tray.

What else can you do with them?

Over on the Suggest an Item page, Kate asked:

What can I do with old pencil stubs, the used ones that are too small to write with any more?

Stubs of old crayons are super easy to reuse – just melt a load down into a new, easy-to-hold shape and off you go – but I suspect pencils will be harder.

I vaguely remember being a kid and taping two together, end to end, to make a slightly longer, double-ended pencil – and it seems you can buy gizmos to help you do that now (although I’m pretty sure I just used tape).

I also know that Jane Eldershaw of JunkJewelry uses the ends of pencils in her work.

Any other reusing or recycling ideas?

Following on from the discussion we had the other week about whether people would prefer less packaging or more packaging that was easier to reuse/recycle, I’ve been wondering: have you ever stopped buying something because of its packaging?

One of the purposes of packaging is to attract us to buy the product over all the other options on the shelf – but has a company’s packaging decision actually turned you away from the item?

Perhaps they use shrink wrap plastic unnecessarily, or perhaps they swapped from something easily recyclable to something almost impossible to recycle (eg Kitkat moving from foil & paper to shiny plastic), or perhaps it was like the joint of beef which is potentially going to cost Sainsburys a lot of money next month – just too much of everything.

What’s put you off?

Frequent commenter on Recycle This, Linda, the bookstorebabe, emailed to tell us about a recipe for using up apple peel and cores:

I just read this on Craftster, about making jelly from the peels and cores of apples. Seems like a nice way to use something that otherwise would be composted. Especially if you’re making apple pie or such like. No, I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan on it! And I follow your website, so just thought I’d pass along the link. The first page has the recipe, the second page has some info I didn’t know about how jelly jells and such.

You have a lovely website – full of so many useful ideas!

Great link, thanks! I love recipes that use up the bits of food usually thrown in the compost bin – especially at the moment when so many people are cooking up gluts of apples.

Another reuse for apple peels is to make apple cider vinegar – either using a wild fermentation method or using cultivated winemaker’s yeast.

We also feed chopped apple peel/cores to our chickens – an indirect way of putting them in the compost really.

Any other suggestions? What do you do with your peels and cores?

We’ve had an email from Scott, asking:

Is there any use for old sparkplugs?

As someone who barely knows what a sparkplug looks like let alone does, I’m not really in a position to answer this question. Google tells me that they can be cleaned up again but it’s not recommended (although disclaimer: all the people talking about it are performance/engine obsessives, so they might be pushing for more than the average person).

Does anyone else know if they can be revamp and reused?

Or what about other reuses for them? Anyone incorporated them into any other creations?

And what about recycling? Can they be recycled for their component parts and if so, where/how?

(Photo by Gerald Zuckier)