1001 uses for plastic bottles.

Plastic bottle recycling has been one of the great disasters of our time. In the early days during the 80s there were mounds of drinks bottles and no-one could come up with a use. Some now get used for fleeces and making up fence posts but the supply of empties continues to outstrip demand. And then it emerged that many recycling facilities were overcoming this problem by shipping the bales of squashed bottles to China for recycling but that most were just heaped up and burnt.

Which begs the question 'Why don't they simply get taken to power stations and burnt in place of oil or coal?', they are after all just oil in solid form.

But before putting them out for recycling some can be used around the home.

The top 2 to 3 inches of the neck section of a 2 liter fizzy drinks bottle makes a perfect funnel for use in the kitchen or workshop. They are not too heat resistant but put up with engine oil and paint thinners. The bottom couple on inches make cheap flower pots. Just cut them up with kitchen scissors and poke a few holes through the feet bits.

The 'square' shape white milk cartons make ideal little scoops (the small ones are best as they are more rigid). Leave the lid on and cut diagonally from below the handle to the other side. Handy for the kitchen but not too strong.

Keep some lids handy as they can be used by kids for wheels on their models.

This works even better for some of the heavy duty bottles often used by cleaning companies or business for soap or bleach. The best way to cut these to shape is to lie them on their side and put a sharp saw across them. These are them sturdy enough for shoveling animal feed, cement, sand, they make brilliant spades on the beach because they double up as buckets to carry water too. And again the bottoms make sturdy flowerpots once you've overdone it making scoops.

Now recycle the off cuts.

A 5 liter soap container, a 2 liter bleach bottle and 2 liter milk carton.

Reduce rating 0/10,
Reuse rating 8/10,
Recycle rating 4/10.

Plant flower pots and trays for seedlings

In most cases you don't want to sow your seeds in a tray because by the time they are ready to transplant all the roots have knotted together.

Obviously save any flower pots you can get your hands on but there never seem to be enough small ones.

The cardboard rolls from toilet paper or kitchen roll or wrapping paper trimmed to length, stood in a plastic box and packed with compost are ideal planters as they just rot away when transferred to the vegetable garden.

Alternatively, next time you're at childrens party or other social event just collect up a stack of used small plastic cups. Punch a couple of holes in each as you need them and they make perfect flower pots and you might get 2 uses from each.

Reduce rating 2/10,
Reuse rating 8/10,
Recycle rating 5/10.

Electric cable as garden plant ties.

You can tie your plant supports with string but it always seems as if you need an extra pair of hands and you can tie your plants up with string but the same applies and you have to be careful not to make the tie too tight.

Let's get familiar with the merits of electric cable.

Ask any electrician for some off cuts or end of rolls of the 3 core 1.5mm or 2.5mm cable used for domestic plug sockets, the kind where the wire is a single strand not the twisted stuff.

Strip the outer sheath of by making a small cut at one end, grab hold of the red and black wires and pull them apart and they will just rip the sheath open. Don't strip off the red and black covering but just cut the wires to length as you go.


The wire is stiff enough that when wrapped around plant supports it is quite up to the job of holding up a row of beans in a strong wind.

Take a couple of turns around the support so the wire won't slip and leave a tail to bend into a hook to loop around plant stems. As the plant grows it is easy to slide it up the support or to open the loop out to allow for the increase in stem size. Quite strong enough to hold up a grape vine.

At the end of the season, unwrap the wire and put it away until next year. The copper inner doesn't rust and the outer sheath lasts almost forever. The black ones you can use where you don't want them to be seen. The red pieces are a lot easier to see so rather than unwinding them from your bean plants just put the wires and plant into the compost and fish them out when the compost is ready to use next season.

Reduce rating 2/10,
Reuse rating 9/10,
Recycle rating 0/10.

Cardboard tubes

Cardboard tubes be they from toilet rolls, kitchen rolls, wrapping paper, bolts of fabric or carpets are usually 'unfinished', in other words the surface has not been coated to make it water resistant or for printing.

Small, thin wall tubes scrunched up and thrown in the compost heap provide support and drainage, allow a little air circulation and are homes for the creepy crawlies that make compost. Compost heaps with a little of this unfinished card added do better than ones without. (Any kind of corrugated card that has not got a finished surface for printing on or finished corrugated card that has been shredded up for packing material work just as well .)

The tubes from rolls of fabric may need a bit of bashing up first but even if added, intact but in short sections, to a compost heap they will disappear in a couple of months.

(However, don't put finished printed card like whole cereal boxes in the compost as they won't break down, they need shredding first.)

Thin wall tubes stood on end and held in a box can be filled with compost as seed planters. Unlike a flower pot or seed tray there is no need to transplant the seedlings, just put them in the ground or window box in the tube which will disintegrate in a few weeks.

Heavier duty tubes can be used for all sorts of construction projects especially if you know of a local dramatics group or are perhaps having a themed party. The tubes from fabric rolls painted up and tied together make a passable likeness to bamboo and roofed off with thatch or carpet tubes cut in half lengthways and painted terracotta make the basis for a beach themed bar. Other uses I've put them to are masts and spars for sailing ships in a pantomime and the barrels for canons.

Reduce rating 1/10,
Reuse rating 9/10,
Recycle rating 3/10.

Reduce Reuse Recycle - Intro

We all want to 'do our bit' to save Planet Earth.
Well I hope you do.
If you don't then you should leave....NOW!

And 'Reduce Reuse Recycle' is sound advice.

Reduce - there's no arguing with that. To maintain the average lifestyle of a person living in one of the 'developed countries' would require the resources of 4 Planet Earths. Oooops!

Reuse - brilliant, I would never have thought of that!

Recycle - but does it sometimes seem to you, if you sit and think about it, that the recycling will use more resources than the recycled item is worth?

For example. You've sorted your waste paper and put it out for the kerbside collection:
A large truck arrives, well that's full of materials that could have been used for something else and some of which are non-renewable and non-recyclable.
The truck is burning diesel as it chugs around it's route, burning non-renewable fossil fuel in other words and creating a carbon footprint.
The waste paper is delivered to a depot where it has to be kept dry, which probably means warm too - the building cost something as does the heating.
The paper is sorted - probably by some sort of machine using fossil fuel and probably kept well lit.
The sorted paper is loaded onto another truck to make another journey.
To a plant full of machinery to turn it into new goods, which then make another journey to the point of sale.
It's an expensive business recycling.

Maybe there's a better way that some of that paper could be reused or recycled closer to home.

1... Shock, horror, burn it! If you have an open fire or wood burning stove why not get the heat out of some of it. Maybe it's only the small proportion used for kindling, most 'window' envelopes use a cellulose for the window, that's plant fibers to you and me. Maybe you have the time and patience to plait some sheets of newspaper into 'twigs', they burn quite slowly. Maybe you have the room to make up paper briquettes, but remember the aim here is not to buy expensive equipment or spend anything on drying them out before you can burn them.
And collect the ashes and put them on the garden.

2...Shred it! Shredded paper makes great bedding for pets or livestock like chickens. And when it's done there, compost it along with all the droppings, it'll mulch down in almost no time at all. But we are now into the realms of buying a shredder but a £19 paper shredder used only occasionally for domestic paper will last almost forever. 1 waste collection truck = how many shredders?

3...A great deal of paper only has printing on one side. Tear A4 sheets into quarters, hole punch in one corner, loop a rubber band through the hole, hang it up and use for shopping lists, etc. (Make sure you bring the list home again to burn, compost or recycle.)

4...Newspaper makes quite a good liner for hanging baskets. It may look a bit odd until it is covered over but at the end of the season into the compost it goes.

The aim here is to get another use, or many uses, out of something without it costing anything.