Recycle This regular Anna left a question on the Suggestion page back in APRIL but I somehow missed it until now – sorry Anna!

Her question was:

How could I use completely dry fudge? I have two big boxes of completely dry Irish fudge that I’d like to find a use for. The fudge isn’t crumbly but dry and hard – hard enough that I don’t want to risk my coffee grinder with it.

Is there a way to make it soft again? Or just break it to small pieces somehow or soak in coffee or something.

Mmm, fudge. Between my misunderstanding about crackers on Tuesday and yesterday’s leftover turkey recipe round-up, Recycle This has conspired to make me feel hungry all week!

Could it be grated with a cheese grater and used as sprinkling on top of cakes/foam-y drinks?

This “failed fudge fool” recipe might work too – make it into a creamy dessert.

Any other ideas?

We’ve had an email from (not my) John:

What can be done with Smint boxes? Anything?

Smint packets are sealed plastic dispensers, which according to the Smint website can’t be opened and refilled to “assure the maximum hygiene for our product”. That makes them infinitely less easy to reuse as, say, Tic Tac boxes, which can be opened and refilled easily.

Does anyone know if there is a way to open & refill Smint boxes? If you can get into them, like Tic Tac boxes, they’d be useful for storing and dispensing all sorts of small items like beads, seeds or air rifle pellets. If you can’t get into them though, I’m stuck for reuses. Anyone else got any ideas?

The best thing would probably be to avoid them in the first place – the all important “reduce”. There are lots of mints available in paper packaging – a much lower footprint.

Any other thoughts?

After seeing Judith Williamson’s wonderful jewellery made from old sweet tins the other week, I’ve been thinking about what else could be done with them. T’is approaching the season for big tins of chocolates and biscuits after all.

Since they’re well sealing metal tins, they’re great for using for stuff that needs to be kept dry – a sewing kit, next year’s seeds stash, spices, flour, first aid kits/emergency kits, spare nuts & bolts in the garage… What do you store in them?

But do you use them for anything more exciting? Like Judith, have you use them to make anything fun?

Continuing in our Green Halloween series…

What with food safety issues and all the urban legends about razor blades & whatnot, nearly all trick-or-treat treats these days are shop-bought and individually wrapped – possibly the worst way to eat sweets or chocolate in terms of packaging waste, especially as it’s mostly plastic wrappers which can’t be recycled.

Do you do anything to minimise the amount of sweetie packaging you give out – or collect?

What are the most reusable or recyclable options?

One way of to reduce, of course, is to opt out of the whole trick or treating thing altogether – but are there any other alternatives?

And while we’ve covered this before in the long dim and distant past, any new reusing/upcycling ideas for the wrappers – transparent ones like in the picture or opaque ones used on mini chocolate bars etc?

(Photo by eisenbahner)

We’ve had a short but sweet (ha!) email to Compost This from Matea:

Can I put sweets gone sticky in my compost bin?

As with many “can I compost this?” questions, there is no fixed answer that applies 100% of the time in 100% of the situations. In a basic open heap, I’d say no – the sweetness may attracted unwanted insects and if it’s only breaking down slowly, you might end up with a sticky lump in the middle of your heap. Even when it does breakdown, they won’t add that many nutrients to your compost heap – in the same way they’re not exactly nutritious for us to eat either.

In other situations though, sugar can be good for a compost heap – it encourages bacteria growth in bins otherwise lacking (bins filled with leaves usually need more help than bins filled with a mix of stuff including kitchen waste) – so in that situation, you might want to add your sweeties. To avoid the sticky lump thing, you could try heating them up and making them into a runny sugar water solution. Said solution can also apparently be used to perk up weak plants – a soak for bare roots – or even, moving away from compost, overworked bees. What else can they be used to perk up?

Any other uses?

(Photo by BarBloke)