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

ZeroWasteWeek

good_advice wrote: »

Does this count?

Brilliant! I love a good rescue of something unloved and you'll get lots of pleasure seeing those family photos displayed.

Loving the peg bag too; you're very creative! I just have a plastic sandwich bag for my pegs - I need a pretty peg bag

Former_MSE_Andrea

You're welcome. I'm so looking forward to #dumpthejunk Part 2!

Former_MSE_Andrea

Hi everyone!

Our Dumpyourjunk Part 2 spring cleaning and decluttering twitter chat with Rachelle is 11am tomorrow (Friday 20 March). If you couldn't make it to the last one in January you can read all about it, and how to join in, in our Dump Your Junk Decluttering blog.

Primrose

Two two inch deep large plastic trays from Costco containing chicken thighs for freezer washed and recycled and now storing my small pots of tomato and courgette seedlings on bay window sill.

Austin_Allegro

Here's some stuff I do:

Newspapers/magazines/cardboard: keep for mulching or put in compost or use for cleaning off paint brushes.

All uncooked food waste goes in compost heap.

Chopped ends of veg like carrots etc get sprouted and planted in the garden.

Old socks and underwear get cut up for cleaning rags/dusters.

Old shirts, trousers etc are worn for dirty jobs then cut up for patching, rags etc and the buttons, zips etc removed and stored.

Old plastic bottles get reused for home wine making.

Razor blades get sharpened and reused with the 'hand stropping' method.

Plastic and glass jars get reused for storing dried herbs from the garden etc.

Plastic bottles get used for capillary plant watering (you stick an old boot lace in the water and the other end in the plant)

All the little bits of tile, rock, glass etc that seem to infest London gardens (where does it come from?!) gets raked up and dumped in a pile at the bottom of the garden. The intention is to use it for some kind of paving in the future, if I ever get round to it!

Yoghurt pots get cut into strips to make plant labels.

Jiffy bags are kept for when I'm selling books etc on Ebay/Amazon.

Leaky rubber gloves get repaired with Shoo Goo. when they're too far gone they get binned, but if one of the pair is still good, it is kept to make up a pair in the future. If it is the 'wrong' hand I turn it inside out.

I had large, dead conifer in the garden - I spray painted it with green paint and it looked totally 'alive' again - silly I know but it 'lived' several more years!

Any small odds and ends like nuts, bolts, grommets, washers, bits of wire etc get saved, they always come in handy for bicycle and household repairs. It's in the blood I think - my grandfather was an armourer in the Fleet Air Arm and had to repair planes, torpedoes etc at sea with anything he could find. I lived with him as a child and picked up his habit!

Pipe tobacco dottle and matches go in compost.

I keep a bucket in the shower and the collected water goes on the garden in summer.

If you have a big garden, green waste that is no good for compost (ie, contains weeds) can just be put on a big heap. After a year or two this will become very fertile. I did this for several years and got good crops of nettles (edible and for tea and wine making) and blackberries for zero effort.

Lopped tree branches that are sturdy enough get reused as garden canes.

Heavy lopped tree branches can be heaped up in a shady damp unproductive corner of the garden to make a 'stumpery' which encourages wild garlic, mushrooms etc to grow.

Toothbrushes are reused for bicycle and shoe cleaning.

Plastic bags are kept for wrapping food etc.

Ziploc bags are washed and reused.

Junk mail gets used as note pads, kids' drawing paper etc.

Xmas and birthday paper gets ironed and reused.

Xmas cards get cut up to make gift tags.

The last drops of emulsion paint get watered down to make a skim/undercoat next time I'm redecorating; means you need less paint for the topcoat.

Bubble wrap gets reused with gaffer tape as a homemade bag for my laptop. It wears out fairly quickly, but costs nothing.

I had a lot of timewasters on Freecycle, so instead if I want to give something away I put it on Ebay for a peppercorn charge - 99p buyer collects only; this encourages reliable people as they don't want negative feedback.

good_advice

I collect rubber bands from the postman often bungling our post together.
I have used some to form a lattice network on our bathroom soap dish. The soap sits on the bands instead of a pool of water, The soap can dry.

I use toilet roll inner tubes to roll up wires inside.
Hairdryer flex. Phone and camera leads.

Reuse any card or paper for making lists.

ZeroWasteWeek

That sounds perfect Primrose; a free propagator! :j

Primrose wrote: »

Two two inch deep large plastic trays from Costco containing chicken thighs for freezer washed and recycled and now storing my small pots of tomato and courgette seedlings on bay window sill.

ZeroWasteWeek

Austin_Allegro wrote: »

I had a lot of timewasters on Freecycle, so instead if I want to give something away I put it on Ebay for a peppercorn charge - 99p buyer collects only; this encourages reliable people as they don't want negative feedback.

This is such a fantastic idea - LOVE it! What is your success rate with growing sprouted veg peelings?

ZeroWasteWeek

I collect the rubber bands too - haven't bought any in about 10 year

Nice soap dish hack!

good_advice wrote: »

I collect rubber bands from the postman often bungling our post together.
I have used some to form a lattice network on our bathroom soap dish. The soap sits on the bands instead of a pool of water, The soap can dry.

Primrose

Posted this on another thread but basically recycled our old three armed Hills Hoist garden washing line dryer into a bird feeder. Removed the broken chord, sawed the three arms down to just one third of their length then stuck back in the plastic seal caps at the end at the end of the sawn off tubes.
This has made a convenient compact feeder for hanging three different bird feeding tubes or peanut cages from and is simply stuck into metal spike in the lawn (£3.99 from Amazon). Any surplus seed which falls out of the feeders Is either foraged by ground feeding birds or if it germinates, the mower cuts it down. When you mow lawn you just have to pull out the main pole and replace it afterwards.