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Recycling
Recycling is a valuable means of re-using old or damaged household and garden items to create something new and useful.
A great deal of satisfaction comes with creating something useful without spending money. All manner of items can be reused, including the following:
Household doors:
Doors can picked up for next to nothing in the classified section of your local paper and are often thrown away by homeowners and construction firms. Doors can be reused by fixing together with boarding to create walls of a new shed. They can also be used to create compost bays. Solid wooden doors are preferred to veneered, egg box type ones. Veneered door will peel and warp very quickly once wet. If they are used to make a shed they should be clad with corrugated steel or roofing felt.
Metal sheets:
The most commonly seen form is galvanised corrugated steel sheets. These can be purchased for less than £2 per foot but if they can be salvaged from businesses and farms when thrown out, all for the better. Galvanised sheeting can last several decades outside before they rust through. They can be utilised for cladding walls, roofing sheds and for livestock housing and shelters. Metal sheets can be used along with wooden or metal poles to create easy to build and maintain compost bays.
Wooden pallets:
Pallets can generally be acquired freely and are often a hindrance to many businesses. Many businesses choosing to burn excess pallets. Indeed, pallet wood is also sometimes recycled within industry to provide fuel for wood burners within boiler houses.
Pallets can be taken apart or used whole to create decking on allotment plots and can be used to create temporary shelters for livestock. The wooden boards could be accumulated to build a makeshift shed, as often seen on many allotments.
Close board fencing:
Feather edge boards can be salvaged from old close board fencing. Often many of the boards are well seasoned and other than a few minor splits are perfectly re-useable for creating small garden sheds and livestock housing.
Windows:
Old household windows and patio doors can be reused to create temporary, makeshift cold frames and cloches for protecting and encouraging young seedlings or cuttings.
Plant and tree waste:
All plant and tree waste can be recycled, even logs can be stacked up to compost slowly and provide refuge for wildlife. Perhaps try to inoculate some of the logs (depending on species) with mushroom spores to generate a crop of mushrooms. Logs must be kept on moist soil for this.
Alternatively ask your tree surgeon to chip the logs. The chippings can then be used at a later date as a weed suppressing, decorative mulch.
Leaves, grass cuttings and pruning’s can all be composted together.
Kitchen stoneware and china:
Broken crockery can be reused as a drainage layer at the bottom of large plant pots.
Glass jars:
Coffee jars, jam jars, and sauce jars can all be used to store packets of seed and small garden items.
Cooker racks and cooking trays:
When you dispose of your old cooker, these items can come in useful in the garden. They can be used to hold plant pots and seed trays for transporting and watering. They are generally made from stainless steel which means they do not rust if left in the garden.
Steel cans and Compact discs:
These can be tied to string on a 5’ (1.5m) (3’ above ground) pole and used within a small vegetable plot as a bird deterrent.
Web links
Check out www.recycle.co.uk to find free recycled items within your area.
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