Renewables At Home » Reuse

Reusing floppy disk boxes

thomas — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:48:42 +0000

Floppy disk boxes. Maybe not the first thing you think of if asked to mention something you couldn’t do without. They were, after all, specifically made to house something that was last seen hurtling towards obsolescence at high speeds: floppy disks.

While rummaging through one of my numerous drawers of old computer stuff, I found three of these boxes. I got them as packaging for 10 floppy disks way back when, so they’re not very big. Not a lot would fit in them.

Still, they’re made from hard plastic and reasonably sturdy, so just throwing them away would be a shame.

So, I extended my rummaging to the rest of my home, and found two good candidates for floppy disk box storage: Seed packets and spice packets. I don’t have a lot of any of these, but the ones I do have tend to float untidily around. Now they’re organized neatly in line, instead of cluttering the place up :-)

If I had a larger floppy disk box (the type with dividers) lying around, I could use it for organizing larger collections of packets, sorting them in categories and whatnot.

If you know about other ways of reusing old floppy disk boxes, please leave a comment!

No related posts.

Green Music Special: How to reuse or recycle CDs

thomas — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:26:06 +0000

Getting rid of your CDs? Don’t toss them in the trash!

CDs (and DVDs) contain plastic and metals (mainly aluminum) and really shouldn’t be stuffed in a landfill or burnt.

Here are a few tips and pointers as to what to do instead:

Give them away to a friend
Maybe you know someone that could use them, even if you can’t/won’t?
Give them to a flea market
Many flea markets accept CDs and DVDs. You’ll give your collection a new lease of life, and possibly support a good cause at the same time.
Sell them
You never know, maybe some of your old CDs are actually valuable? There are plenty of places to sell CDs – look for local stores or do a bit of googling to find a good website that serves your area.
Use them for something entirely different
CDs can be used for more than just music. Use them as coasters. Make a CD lamp. Use them as a rack for the CDs you’re not getting rid of.
Recycle them
If none of the above work for you, make sure you recycle your CDs properly. (If that link doesn’t give you any good alternatives, ask your municipality where to recycle CDs).

Want to read more about music, festivals and green issues? Take a look at the other posts in the Renewables At Home Green Music Special.

Two more R’s: Refuse and Repurpose

thomas — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:40:51 +0000

Since you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the three R’s:

Reduce (the amount of stuff you buy)
Reuse (the stuff you do buy as many times as possible)
Recycle (the stuff you can’t use anymore)

The three R’s are a bit of a golden mantra for anyone interested in lessening humanity’s impact on the environment – and rightly so. They make good sense.

But I really think there should be two more R’s:

Refuse (unnecessary junk you get offered – like plastic bags)
Repurpose

The last item – Repurpose – doesn’t get a parenthesis, since I’m spending the rest of this post writing about it.

An item’s lifecycle

Being economically savvy and environmentally minded, you always buy quality once instead of junk twice (Reduce).

Since your quality item doesn’t break down easily, you can use it for a long time (Reuse).

When it finally breaks down, you might think it’s time to dispose of it in a responsible way (Recycle).

But wait! Don’t get rid of it just yet.

With a bit of creativity, maybe you can keep using the item for years to come – just not for its original purpose (Repurpose).

A new purpose in life for your stuff

Try to look at your broken or worn-out stuff in a new way before throwing it out.

Could it be used for something where it’s current status as broken wouldn’t matter?

Here’s an example of using something broken for an entirely different purpose:

A friend of mine was building a house, using cinderblocks for the basement walls.

Two of the cinderblocks were dropped on the concrete foundation and got a few sizable chunks knocked off.

They couldn’t be used in a load-bearing wall anymore, so I took them home to my balcony and used them for planters instead. The picture at the top of this post is of a miniature pot rose growing happily in one of the cinder blocks.

Parts can also be used

If you can’t find a new purpose for the entire broken object, maybe you can for parts of it?

A lift curtain I once had in my home office are now living on in parts:

My girlfriend has sewn herself a very nice-looking skirt from the curtain cloth.
Our common hop (plant) is cheerfully using the curtain’s metal rods for climbing.
Part of the curtain’s string is used for keeping two slightly wobbly shelves steady.

For another repurposing example, I immodestly recommend my previous post about repurposing a flower pot for a bumblebee nest.

(This post is my take on this week’s Change The World Wednesday challenge at Reduce Footprints)

Repair stuff, save both kinds of green

thomas — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:18:37 +0000

Have you ever had a door handle, chair, turntable, gadget, doohickey or thingamajig break down on you?

I’m guessing you have.

And I’m also guessing you’ve been quite displeased about it, and perhaps resigned yourself to throwing the darned thing in the trash and buying a new one.

The next time something breaks, though, try taking a closer look at why it’s broken. There’s a good chance you’ll find it can be fixed easily with simple tools and materials.

Environmental impact reduction times three

Most new stuff you buy will already have had an impact on the environment before it reaches you:

A certain amount of energy has been spent to extract raw materials and manufacture it
A certain amount of energy has been spent to transport it to you

This – along with the energy that is spent to disassemble, deconstruct or decompose it when you toss it out – is known as embodied energy.

Whenever you repair something instead of just trashing it, you’re effectively saving an equivalent of that product’s entire embodied energy.

No raw materials are extracted, no energy is spent manufacturing, nothing is spent transporting a new product to you and no energy is spent on disassembly etc.

And, since you no longer have to buy a new product, you’re saving money, too!

Fixing a camera with an eraser

Here’s an example of a cheap repair that saved some decent money and quite a bit of embodied energy.

My girlfriend’s camera was dropped on paving stones, and the useless little plastic latch keeping the battery in place broke off.

The camera was still fine in all other respects, but it was kind of awkward trying to get good pictures while using two fingers to hold the battery in place.

Typically enough, the camera importer’s service department said it would be more expensive to have the latch replaced than buying a new camera.

Spending hundreds of dollars on a replacement camera didn’t feel right. It was working just fine, after all, if it weren’t for the lack of that pesky piece of plastic.

I ended up gluing a small piece of eraser to the inside of the lid that covers the battery compartment. When the lid is closed, the eraser pushes the battery firmly into its slot (see picture below).

So now the only awkward part of taking pictures with that camera is me, whenever I’m in front of it :-D

You can’t repair everything with a bit of glue and an eraser, of course, but I still think it shows you can do a lot with a little.

For more inspiration on fixing broken stuff to save both the environment and money, you might want to take a look at the newly started but promising blog Fixin’ to be green.

Even better than fixing broken stuff is having stuff that don’t break in the first place. Check out my guest post on quality versus cost over at Pays to Live Green for more on that.

Reuse your old mattress

ellen — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:46:48 +0000

Don’t throw your old, worn-out mattresses away. Store them in the attic or garage or on the top of a closet instead.

Whenever your children are “feeling bouncy” and have extra energy to get rid of, you can pull out a mattress or two and let them jump around to their heart’s content.

This gives your mattresses an extra lease of life and saves wear and tear on your sofa and bed.

Green Music Special: How to reuse or recycle CDs

Entertaining children with junk mail

thomas — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:16:13 +0000

Are you the unwilling victim of a constant deluge of junk mail? Is your budget for toys stretched? Does your toddler keep grabbing your newspapers and books to tear them apart?

Do not despair. These problems can all be alleviated in one fell swoop.

Every time a pile of junk mail precipitates its way onto your doorstep or into your mailbox, set it aside. Then, the next time you see your child setting its sights on the newly arrived Sunday newspaper, grab a handful from your junk mail stockpile and intercept the little one with it.

With any luck, your offspring will soon be thoroughly entertaining him- or herself by opening envelopes, studying all the pretty pictures and tearing, ripping and rending the publishing atrocities apart, leaving your newspaper unscathed.

When the carnage is over, you can put the remains into the paper recycling bin, happily in the knowledge that the junk mail was actually useful for a change.

PLEASE NOTE: Make sure there aren’t any small bits of plastic or anything else in the junk mail envelopes that your child could choke on or otherwise use to harm itself.