Zero Waste Week - tell us your best upcycling and re-use tips

kboss2010

Re: Rats

Do you have a friend or relative who could lend you their cat for a day or so every few months? Or even better adopt one of your own! I've never lived in a house that had mice and rats when I've had a cat or my neighbours have had cats, even when further down the street had infestations! I'm currently the crazy young cat lady who keeps cat treats to lure the neighbour's cats into the garden to stop us from ever having mice. I can't have a cat of my own as I'm renting

My MIL found pellets on her fireplace around a new plant and freaked out when I suggested that the mysterious deposits looked like mouse droppings! Turns out it was caterpillar droppings from her new potted plant - the caterpillar had been slowly munching his way through the all you can eat buffet at night and then crawling back up the stems into the pot during the day, leaving deposits behind! We found him when we took the plant out of its pot in case it was attracting mice.

Former_MSE_Andrea

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calicocat

GQ.......


Can I use the ash from the chimenea to dig into my soil...usually a combination of wood and charcoal...??

GreyQueen

calicocat wrote: »

GQ.......


Can I use the ash from the chimenea to dig into my soil...usually a combination of wood and charcoal...??

I can't see that it would ever be a problem, they're both natural materials, pretty much carbon and potash. I read in Ben Law's book Woodsman about the small charcoal fines left over from charcoal burning being used as a soil improver. He was pleased to find another use for the tiny leftover bits which had too many impurities to be used as filters, for example.

As with everything, treat it as an additon and scatter it around, to blend in with the rest of the soil, rather than put it all in a tiny area.

I find it envigorating to look at so-called waste from the point of view of it being a resource. Once you progress past the state of thinking rubbish - dustbin- outta here - forgetaboutit, you can really come on in leaps and bounds. Stuff is a resource. Maybe you can re-use it in your own life, maybe you can get it to someone who can re-use it, maybe it isn't in re-usable condition anymore but can be recycled into its component parts and used for something else.

The world is full of potential.

Primrose

Haven,t had time to read through entire thread but I save used white envelopes and cut out little squares of paper from them to use in those little plastic cubed noteholder containers.

kboss2010

I use cardboard boxes to cut out patterns for my sewing/quilting blocks.

Old, worn-out clothes get added to my scraps box to patch up other things/to make patchwork quilts with. This is especially useful as my OH is always tearing his jeans and he's one of the few young guys that hates the "fashionably ripped jeans" style! Such a shame as I once had a flatmate who spent hundreds on D&G ripped jeans!

I'm going to use my old fleece pj trousers that have gone all scratchy due to being over washed to make a couple of black and silver tartan draught excluders. The stuffing will come from old pillows that I'm about to throw out.

Primrose

mrsd wrote: »

On another note, a friends OH who works for council said you can recycle milk bottle tops if your force them inside the bottle. That way they dont get caught up in the machinery and go through system safely.

Check your local Air Ambulance Charity website. Ours collects plastic milk bottle tops for recycling for fund raising. Yours may do this too. so that's where ours go. .


We use one pint plastic milk bottles for storing homemade soup which has been whizzed in a blender so there are no lumpy vegetable bits to block the top of the bottle when it's poured out into a saucepan to reheat. . They are great space savers, can be reused time & time again unlike plastic bags, and a pint bottle holds two generous helpings.

RAS

calicocat wrote: »

GQ.......


Can I use the ash from the chimenea to dig into my soil...usually a combination of wood and charcoal...??

Check out Amazonian Black earth. People now spend a lot of time trying to create exactly what you will end up with.

GreyQueen

Primrose wrote: »

We use one pint plastic milk bottles for storing homemade soup which has been whizzed in a blender so there are no lumpy vegetable bits to block the top of the bottle when it's poured out into a saucepan to reheat. . They are great space savers, can be reused time & time again unlike plastic bags, and a pint bottle holds two generous helpings.

I have several 4-pint plastic milk bottles re-purposed under the kitchen sink to hold dry powder things like soda crystals, which otherwise tends to set into solid bricks, and washing powers. They make the stuff easier to dispense, as well as keeping it dry and safe in even should there be a water leak.

I'm also using a 4 pint milk bottle half-filled with stones as a doorstop up at my bikeshed, whose door is othewise prone to swinging closed on me.

You can also cut the shoulders off a milk bottle, leaving the handle behind, to make a handy receptacle for blackberrying and similar gathering activities.

Now have half an ice-cream tub of tealeaves, which are looking rich and mysterious and full of growing potential. Have baked some eggshells when cooking a couple of days ago so will be adding them to the soil already crushed this weekend. I have decided to start re-charging the soil in what was the onion bed, as they are pretty heavy feeders and gave me a bumper crop, so that soil needs some oomph. I shall also manure it, but can start now with the leaves and shells.

I find when you garden, you think differently about things. You don't tend to waste the tiniest marble of a h.g. spud or fragment of another kind of veggie, and you feel that the soil is something you tend, rather than just some random thing which you use to keep plants upright.

moneyistooshorttomention

More thoughts along those lines welcome GQ for those of us just starting to "find our feet" with tending a garden.:)