TRASH IS A TREASURE (MAYBE).
Each of us generates hundreds, if not thousands, of kilos of trash each year. We put it at our doors and someone else collects it and we just forget about it. At the same time, we buy new things to serve our needs. But what if we could use some of the things we had meant to throw away and repurpose them? That would spare us some money and the town hall some work. Here we give you some ideas.
Coffee
Coffee is a perfect example. We prepare our coffee, drink it, and throw the rest away. But there are many possible uses for the grounds.
The first one is composting it and making fertilizer for your plants. You can compost anything organic. Just look for a shadowy corner in your garden and pile it up. You can put there the grass you have mowed, fallen leaves, fruit peels, rests of vegetables in general, but also paper towels (provided you haven’t used them to clean any nasty chemicals) and even your cat’s waste... You could even compost your own "waste", but that would be going a little too enthusiastically with that. Although meat and fish will compost perfectly well, they will also attract flies, so if you insist on composting, better dig a hole in your compost heap and bury it there. Conifers can delay the composting process, so do not throw their needles or branches there. More about composting in a future post.
You can also reuse the coffee grounds to clean your sewage. Pipes often get stuck because grease accumulates on the sides, narrowing the space for the flowing water. But you can use your coffee rests as a sort of sandpaper. Let the warm water run for a while. This will soften the fat deposits in the pipe. Then pour the coffee grounds into the sewage and let the warm water drag them. Repeat this once or twice a week and forget about using nasty chemicals to unclog the sink. There is one caveat, though. This trick only works to maintain your pipes; it does not unclog them when they are already clogged, in which case, throwing the coffee grounds can make things even worse.
We all go to the restroom now and then to satisfy our needs, and sometimes we leave there a not very pleasant “aroma”. In the drugstore, they will sell us air fresheners. But if you want to spare your lungs some chemicals and your wallet a few bucks, just take the empty packet of coffee, turn it inside-out, and leave it in some corner of your bathroom.
Egg trays
Eggs are cheap, nutritious, and delicious, and you probably buy quite a lot of them. I certainly do. We eat them and throw the egg tray away. But they can serve many purposes and also spare you a few cents every day. If you can choose, get your eggs in cardboard trays, not only because if you are here, you probably want to minimize the use of plastic, but also because the cardboard egg trays are the most useful.
Forget about a fire-starting tablet for your barbecue or fireplace. Break the egg tray into pieces, make a little heap with them, and put some wooden sticks on top. You do not need to, but if you want to be more sophisticated than this, you can follow this tutorial on the link below.
Counting My Chickens.
You can also use the egg trays to germinate your seeds. At your favorite gardening center, you could buy small cardboard containers for the same purpose. But why would you? You already have at home what you need, and for free. Just put the egg tray on a regular tray or the plastic lid of a box, fill the egg tray with soil, put your seeds there, and do not forget to water them. Little by little, the cardboard will start to decompose, but that is not bad, quite the contrary, because you can put the whole thing directly in the ground or a plant pot, and mother nature will get rid of the cardboard after a while.
For more details, you can visit Mary Ellen Ellis’s page on the link below:
Carton Seed Tray.
If you are the sort of person that likes to use your laptop on top of your lap, you know that it can get warm, especially those new ones with ventilation holes in the bottom. You can buy some special laptop support, but the best thing you can use for that purpose is one of those large square egg trays. It is light and you are adding almost no weight to your legs, so the warm air can flow without any obstacle.
Finally, if you are the artistic type, there are plenty of ornaments you can make with egg trays, from photo frames to Christmas trees. After all, the best presents are the ones you make yourself. We just advise you to visit the DesignRulz page to get some ideas of what you can craft on the link below.
Recycling Egg Cartons Craft Ideas
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