Share with Tetra Pak your top tips for creative and original environmentally - friendly things in the home: you could win a £250 voucher! NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

We have been asked by the team at Tetra Pak, (the world's leading supplier of food processing and packaging systems) to find out your top tips for reducing the impact your home and life has on the environment. They would love to hear the creative things you do to recycle and reduce the amount of waste your family produce.

Tetra Pak says, "you may know that our company was founded upon the principle that 'a package should save more than it costs'. Our cartons are found on shop shelves and in kitchen cupboards all over the country. They hold everyday items we all depend on, from fruit juice and milk to chopped tomatoes.

"As well as this, our cartons offer a number of environmental benefits; not only are they made primarily from wood - which is a renewable resource - they are also widely recyclable across the UK. With over 90% of UK local authorities now offering a carton recycling service, and 57% of local authorities helping people to recycle their cartons from home, recycling Tetra Pak cartons has never been more straightforward.

“In addition, the special layers in our cartons mean that they protect the goodness of contents inside for longer, reducing waste without any need for added preservatives. They also don't need to be kept in the fridge until opened, meaning they can be stored in your cupboards for added convenience".

You may also know that Tetra Pak has launched a new interactive recycling map to help you find out more about carton recycling in your area.

Find out more: www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk/locator.asp

To help promote the recycling of its own cartons - Tetra Pak would now love to hear about your most creative and inventive tips and tricks for being 'green' at home.

Maybe you learnt an amazing tip from Mumsnet, or came up with your very own way of, for example, reducing food waste in your home? What’s the most creative way you've found to recycle your household waste? What family activities have you done to make recycling fun for your children? What would you recommend to other families to make recycling even easier? What everyday household objects were you surprised to find that you could recycle?

Whatever it is, please share it on this thread – add your comment and you’ll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £250 voucher for John Lewis/Waitrose.

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

[NotCitrus]

The plastic containers that takeaways come in are so useful for everything - leftover food gets put in them (small children have erratic appetites) and almost all food then gets eaten. The boxes are see-through so great for Lego storage.

Shame that each takeaway place uses a different brand so lids aren't interchangeable. I keep them matched up in huge piles.

We now have doorstep food waste collection as well as comingled recycling, so even with a toddler still in some disposable nappies we only produce a bag of landfill rubbish a week.

[starfishmummy]

When it comes to leftover food, DS is my secret weapon. He loves to have a meal of leftovers!!

[KateOxford]

I save the plastic boxes from the liquitabs to store toys like lego in and screws and nails for the shed. We buy cleaning products in 5L bottles and decant it into smaller ones (recycled from a previous use). The 5L bottles save on packaging. We try not to waste food but do have a food waste bin. I save take away boxes to use as snack boxes. We use fruit that's past it's best to make cakes and muffins. Leftover bread is saved for a trip to the duck pond. Old clothes are taken to the textiles recycling bin at the supermarket and I lift my son up to put the bag in the chute then he closes the lid and gives the bin a tap to help it down! On holiday we take our bottles to the bottle bank and my son puts them in - at home we have mixed recycling collection so don't need to separate the glass. There is a lady in the next street who once put a notice up asking for garden waste so we take ours to her in a green sack which she composts then returns the sack for next time. A lot of our cardboard is saved for junk modelling and Christmas cards are cut up for next years present tags - always with my son. Our online shop is delivered without bags and the

[KateOxford]

Contd... Plastic bags we do have are used to line the nappy bins. We cut up old c

[KateOxford]

Comics to make sticking pictures and recycle wrapping paper to use again. Last week we have a neighbour our old newspaper for using as pass the parcel paper!

[Lemoncakeuk]

I run my local Freegle UK group to reduce landfill. On a personal level we reuse cardboard, plastic anything really for junk modelling (schools often want items - check locally) My local primary made a complete green house from recycled 2 litre bottles!

[Willemdefoeismine]

my tip for waste reduction is to blitz all dry bread in the food processor to make breadcrumbs - freeze and then use as required.

Once a week make a wholesome veggie soup using leftovers from fridge!

Yes, most veggie and fruit waste, coffee grounds, shredded documents and teabags go in the compost bin

Always re-use breadbags as sandwich bags.

Cut up birthday cards so the pictures can be used by DCs in future craft projects....

Regular delivery of empty small boxes, cartons etc...to school for craft projects....

[chezvic]

We use glass jars for storing and cleaning paint brushes in, any egg boxes, cardboard cereal boxes and microwave meal cases are saved for rainy days and making stuff with my daughter, old toothbrushes are kept and used to clean the grout inbetween my bathroom tiles and any old towels are used for cleaning our pets.

[wageslave]

I'd really like my local council to accept tetrapacks in its fortnightly bin collections for recycling. I can take the packs to be recycled at the local recycling site (thanks for the map showing this!), but it would be a lot easier to recycle them from my door step.We use tetrapaks and other squareish containers for freezing sauces and stews. We line the container first with a poly bag, then lift it out and add a label once its frozen, they can be more easily stored like bricks in the freezer.
Toilet and kitchen roll tubes are saved for sowing sweet peas and runner beans, and in the winter I dip the tubes into cheap peanut butter and roll them in birdseed, then hang out for the birds in the garden. Plastic trays from fruit and veg are re-used as seed trays.

I re-use cotton dishcloths many times by soaking them in boiling water left over from the kettle, using a small amount of washing powder/liquid. I then put them into the washing machine with the next load. If the cloths are really grubby then they get a couple of minutes in the microwave in the solution. I keep a special bowl for this.
And when the dishcloths have become tattered, they go into the compost heap. Dishcloths are either made from crocheted string or by cutting up old t-shirts.

The dog gets ends of veg, fish skins and meat leftovers in his tea. He also gets bits of veg that we dont want to eat, e.g., I cook the core/stalks of broccoli and cauliflower when I'm cooking our veg and put them in the dog's dish. Garden birds get unwanted meat fat soaked in leftover bread.
We re-use the washing up water (using environmentally friendly washing up liquid) and is poured over the garden veg or into flower pots and tubs.
Our local dog rescue kennels collects all sorts of things for recycling, so we always have a box on the go for them, including obvious things like printer cartridges, but less obvious items like most plastic pens and highlighters, labels from coffee packs, coffee refill bags, jar lids, coffee bean bags and coffee stick wrappers, and tassimo packaging, and for some reason I'm not sure of, wrappers from sweet biscuit wrappers too. They also get unwanted gifts for their tombola stall.
We also freeze grapefruit and orange skins and when we have enough I make a batch of marmalade
My DH saves lots of pieces of timber in our garage, but I'm not sure if that's recycling, because they don't seem to have come in useful yet...

[MOOON5]

use old milk cartons or plastic bottles for measuring out dog biscuit, washing powder etc by cutting into desired shape and washing and leaving to dry. Some insulating tape around the edges helps prevent you being cut by jagged plastic.

[BreakingDad77]

Cut the top of milk, to make cheap pots

Takeaway plastic containers make great pots for cress and have similar shape to bonsai! containers.

[Wjjkl]

We have very little food waste at home due to having chickens - they pretty much eat the scraps of anything and in return we get lovely eggs - whose shells we then recycle again on the veggie patch to keep out slugs!

[dragonfly63]

An old tip that I find useful is to use the inner cardboard tubes from loo rolls to plant seeds in especially ones that don't like their roots disturbed when planting out as you can sow one seed per roll. If you make four vertical cuts about an inch deep you can fold each piece up to make a base and it stops the compost falling out.

Yoghurt pots make good plant pots. Plastic mesh mushroom trays from farm shops make good trays for standing pots in so they are easy to move and plastic Chinese take away containers can be used as seed trays, their lids can be used before the seeds sprout to conserve moisture and afterwards as bases to stand the trays on.

Punch holes into plastic bottles and cut the pointed end off to give a container that can be sunk into the centre of hanging baskets, window boxes and larger plant pots to get the water right to the roots of plants and stop the water running off the compost when you water.

Old net curtains can be attached to greenhouses with clothes pegs to shade plants on hot days. These can be easily removed on dull days to give more light which stops the plants getting leggy.

Net sacks that farmers sell carrots, turnips and swedes in, can be begged from farm shops and green grocers, When opened out these make great netting around crops that the birds decimate.

Halved grapefruit skins put downwards on the veg patch will form a shady damp place that slugs can shelter in, making them easy to catch and dispose of.

Without using these things that are normally thrown away I would have far less money to spend on plants and seeds.

[daisybrown]

I give all our old newspapers and kitchen towel rolls to my step-daughter for use in her class room. Cartons and plastic bottles/containers are used for home crafts, when no longer wanted they're recycled.

[sarahjackjasper]

My kids and I recycle egg cartons by cutting them up and using them for arts and crafts eh painting and putting on googly eyes.
I also make soup using left over potato peelings and veg.
Used cereal cartons go to my eldest son who loves painting them and then cutting shapes out to give to his grandparents.

[ilovereading]

I think Tetra Pak cartons are brilliant (and keep wondering why, why, WHY the huge supermarket chains persist in packaging so much - if not all - of their fresh milk, fruit juices, etc in that dreadful, non-biodegradable plastic?? IMO it's just irresponsible and ignorant, and I keep meaning to write to them about it - I will, in fact do so soon. I will happily spend a lot more on a fresh Covent Garden soup precisely because it's in a cardboard carton, than on an own-brand cheaper product in their plastic cartons which will still be in the gorund in a few hundred years time...).

We save all our plastic bottle tops, as Granny collects them for a charity which seems to be able to turn them somehow into Wellie boots! . I endlessly reuse microwave cartons/lids/pots for plants, saucers under houseplants, storage etc. Some little plastic dessert pots make good containers for child-size portions to freeze for use later. Plastic shopping bags are reused until they fall apart as bin liners etc. I often cut out interestingly-coloured/patterned cardboard from cereal or cake boxes for later use, eg, to back photos, pictures, stiffen envelopes or whatever. It is so alarming how packaging waste piles up, and sadly, it is a postcode lottery as to which local authorities will recycle what. Ours is not very advanced and still only does the basics, with limited recycling of plastics.

[museumworker]

We reduce food waste by writing a meal plan every week before we go shopping - (almost) everything gets eaten. Leftovers make lunch the next day, or get frozen for future meals. We take packaging to our son's nursery and they make all sorts there with them - giant robots, cardboard christmas trees or strange child-led sculptures! We've cut down plastic bottles to use as cloches in the garden (and protect things from snails, unless the blighters crawl through the spout!)
We're very lucky in that almost everything is recycled in our borough - we have a box in our kitchen next to the bin that everything gets slung into, and that gets emptied once full into the wheelie bin outside. I've even taken an ancient computer to be recycled before, was pleased with that!

[ComfyLeatherChair]

To reduce food waste we:
meal plan
Veg that is a bit past its best gets frozen for soup, same for breadcrumbs
Leftover food from meals go to the chickens,
Peelings to the guinea pig
Everything else to the wormery

Then we use vegetable cartons and punnets to grow seeds (strawberry punnets with the lid on make great mini greenhouses. Plastic trays make great paint pots, etc

[janekirk]

Large yogurt pots are used for plant growing and paint pots.
The kids love to spend their pocket money in the local charity shop, not only can they get a lot more than if they spent their money in a toy shop but it also helps them to learn the value of money.
Also picked up a cheap ssecond hand freezer to put in the garage, helps to reduce the food wastage.

[hunhun007]

We try to do our best with being environmental friendly.
We re-use plastic tabs after butter or yogurts in the garden, especially during spring / summer time for new seedlings (this way I do not have to buy any small pots).
We re-use all metal tins for making storage tubs (mainly covered with fabric or a coloured paper but sometimes we also make them with glued buttons or beads), which then kids sale during summer on car boot sale raising money for whatever they fancy at the moment.
When it comes to food... we still struggle and put too much to the bin but we are working on it... if we make too much we freeze leftovers for quick meal some other day... we do not feed our dogs with it, as in most cases human food is not good for them.
We also buy industrial type kitchen rolls - they are cheaper and last much longer than your standard roll you get at a superstore (we would love to not to use them at all but with a Newfoundland dog in the house this is not an option)

[JulesJules]

We try and recycle as much as possible. Our area does not take many plastics for recyc - so I try and limit the number of things I buy with plastic packaging. Some of the things we can't recyc I collect up and take to the nursery class at the dds school - they are always keen for items for junk modelling and craft activities and use yoghurt pots etc for planting seeds.

I hate throwing food away, all leftover bits of bread get turned into breadcrumbs or croutons and frozen. Odds and ends of veg get turned into soup. Peelings etc go in the compost bin. We have stopped buying bagged salad and grow some salad leaves and herbs on the kitchen windowsill instead.

Our school collects ink cartridges for recyc.

[Letitsnow9]

We use take away style containers to grow seeds in until they are ready to be transferred outside, they are perfect and you can use them again and again

[1amtheonewhoKnocks]

We always use the confidential waste that has been shredded as bedding for our little gerbil girls, they love it. Also orange juice size tetrapaks have become storage boxes for the kids' little toys and bits. They love painting them etc and it's so easy to store little bits of lego etc on them or arts and crafts bits.

[sashh]

A full freezer is cheaper to run than an empty one so if it's getting low I fill it with bread that will always be eaten at some point.

When I was doing a course at an FE college one day a week it was the same day as the catering students baked bread so I could pick it up for the cost of ingredients.

I also freeze milk, I don't drink it myself so have some frozen either in whole pints or in an ice cube tray, I can then put a milk cube in tea for guests.

I make pickles, the most expensive part is the jars and as I give them as presents I don't get the jars back but I can often get them on freecycle.

[ataraxia]

I save unusual jars and tins with a metal/glass pen to re-label them