What do you recycle in the home?

Beany_Spoon

As I was packaging up some eBay items using previosuly used jiffy bags, bubble wrap and cardboard I wondered what everyone else re-uses in their house?

We also save all carrier bags for our shopping and for lining pedal bins rather than using bought pedal bin liners.

We save all small bags too, like bread bags etc to use on food that has been opened.

My OH always has a use for odds and ends for his model railway. (Normally the excess packaging companies use. After Christmas he got alot of pink metallic card from all my bath sets. He turned it round so the pink was facing inwards and built a signal box.)

Just looking on the desk now I can see the holder that my coasters came in storing my £2 coins.

Any examples in your homes where you recycle things to use again in the home, rather than throwing them away/leaving them out for the recycling people? It's always good to hear tips!

Steel_2

I recycle anything I can get my hands on.

Grocery wrappings - we recyle cardboard, tins, plastic bottles, foil tins, paper, magazines and glass using using the councils scheme. I won't buy Tetrapak or yoghurt type pots anymore because I can't recycle them on the scheme.

Plastic bags - I take my own bags shopping to avoid bringing carriers into the house. Small poly bags from fruit etc are used as mini propagators to protect young seedlings and keep them warm. Also used for sandwiches or storing lots of small items so I know where to find them (such as cake decorating items which seem to really build up over time)

Padded/jiffy bags and bubble wrap - reuse for sending out items sold on ebay. Have also taken to opening them up and wrapping them around teraccota pots that might freeze and crack during a hard frost. Occasionally been known to run and slap loads over dahlia corms in the garden when I've suddenly realised a frost is on the way and I haven't dug them up.

Toilet roll inners - excellent little seed tubes for those with long roots like runner beans etc. Gives nice deep soil and you don't have to disturb the root system when you plant out, just stick the seed plus tube in the ground.

If I ever manage to get my hands on plastic beer glasses I use them as mini greenhouses to start seedlings off outside and then later cut the tops off and let them grow on through it to form a mini barier against slugs. Not 100% effective but does cut down some of the damage, especially if I give it a thick margarita style vaseline/salt rim.

Cloth - any clothes or sheets etc that are damaged or worn out are used for patchwork or as scraps to stuff homemade draught excluders. All buttons cut off and zips taken out for reuse.

All dust and fluff out of the dyson goes on the compost heap, as does any financial letters, receipts etc that are shredded.

Garden waste - all peelings and scraps go into the compost bin. My family clubbed together to buy me a shredder for my birthday and now any prunings/branches that can't be burnt on the fire are duly shredded and spread around the flower beds as a mulch.

Firewood - to cut down the cost of heating we tend to live in one room, the living room, and use our open fire to heat it. We get our wood from carpenters and joiners that have scraps left over. We never buy or burn coal.

Firehorse

Same as you, I recycle as much as possible. I'm currently on one of those shake diets which comes in solid plastic containers (about the size of tea cannisters and taller). These get reused as food storage containers, pen pots, my DD uses them for her gardening etc.

My MIL visits her local newsagent where she gathers the haribo square clear boxes, great for storing all her craft bits in.

sheng719

Hi all! I try to recycle most of the stuuf aroung the house...Some of the tips I have also learnt on this site. Anyway, I have mountains of shredded paper which I use to line guniea pig hutches with and give some to my daughters gerbils to play around with. I have just been recently thinking of other things that I could do with them and would be trying to do handmade paper from the old paper and newspaper weather permiting as it is not feasivle to dry them as of the moment. Old newspapers are also used to line guniea pig hutches. Garden wastes go to the compost bins for future gardening use. Food wastes are collected in a food waste basket for the council to take weekly, but some of the vegetable peelings go to the guniea pigs food bowl as they squeek their hearts out whenever they know I am preparing food for the family. Old enevelops can be covered again and reused. The odd times that we do have a take away, I reuse the plastic containers as food keepers, and same goes for the tubs from ice cream, butter, etc. Old shopping bags are now being used to line or bin in the bathroom and kitchen...And we are now using them bags for life things...The possibilty are endless as the recycling advert goes but you may just have to be very creative!:p

love_lifer

some of the above. plus i use the cold water running before the hot for watering my plants
old knickers and socks for dusting/cleaning
will shut up now...

rach

same as lots of you, though got some extra ideas, thanks i use natural bags or cloth bags for life for my shopping, so am depleting my plastic bags for bin liners (though i now only use them in the kitchen bin and empty the others straight into the wheelie bin.)

jiffy bags, in fact all A5 or larger envelopes:if you cut a bit off the top they are handy for filing stuff

my knitting is in an old shoe box, tins get used for anything and everything, i have some in my drawer with cosmetics in and stuff - keeps it tidy.

only other thing i can see is the baking powder pot with £2 coins in and a vitamin pot with my money earned at weightwatchers in

jellycat40

You are all so good. I try but am not anything like as resourceful as you guys. i use the council recycling scheme - it is criminal to do otherwise IMHO.

I do compost but my compost bin is full and as we don't garden I don't know what I am going to do with it all!!! The bottom looks like lovely stuff. We do burn or shred most of our garden waste and I do reuse packaging that comes in the post. I tend to chuck the ice cream and marg tubs but I will keep them from now on and use them a couple of times more before I do.

For the first time today I took my bags back to Tesco and reused them - I have been taking my Onya bag on shopping trips at other times but the first for the supermarket.

I did a check on my Carbon Footprint and it was not wonderful at 5.25 but I am at least trying - I have no idea what it would be if I was not going on these boards and learning different ways.

Louise

Sarahsaver

My littlest DS burps into plastic bottles befpre putting them outside in the recycling box. He says he is recycling his burps. ANy idea what they will be made into?

SusanCarter

jellycat40 wrote:

I do compost but my compost bin is full and as we don't garden I don't know what I am going to do with it all!!! The bottom looks like lovely stuff.

If you don't know anyone who wants it (friend or neighbour), you could always try offering it on Freecycle.

carolbee

as we have been deliberatly recycling and shopping in a different way for a little while, have a council scheme, use Freecycle etc, its quite difficult to find anything we DON'T re-use, I expect others feel the same. I save all sorts of containers that dont get recycles for craft/storage/gardening. very little goes in our landfill wheely now I'm very proud to say.

I always find it interesting to hear what others reuse!

COOLTRIKERCHICK

my recycling has really stept up a gear .... first of since i have stopped using supermarkets..... my packaging waste has gone right down...... as now i buy my fruit/veg from a market stall....... he puts them into brown bags.... which i put into my compost bin....... but from next week......i will be taking my own plastic storage box thing....so once he's weighed my fruit/veg.. it can go straight in the box... so saving the brown bags.....

if a toy or anything really which is totally beyond repair.. broken..... we take all screws out even the tiny ones that are used to seal the battery holder......as you never know when you need screws/nails etc.......

our council do a recycling scheme.... they pick up every week.... we have a bin for glass/metal.... and then they give us a clear plastic sack for paper... and a blue sack for pastic.......i only put these sacks out when they are full.... as otherwise you are wasting a sack......but any cans that are alu.....i save them seperately.. and cash them in...:D

the council dont recycle cardboard at mo... so i add sone to the compost bin.... and everything else is taken to the same place where i take my alu cans....

cant think of anything else at mo... mind has gone blank...