How to recycle toilet rolls
From the clever people at recyclethis.co.uk
Aren't toilet rolls amazing? If you're a 'yes, I do like to read-on-the-toilet' chiquita, print this out and flick through our almost-nearly 101 uses for recycled toilet roll. From DIY christmas crackers to making lampshades, you'll be amazed and occasionally bewildered.
- Saved up quite a few toilet rolls? Make a toilet paper lampshade.
- Donate them to local schools for art projects - if you're feeling fussy, you can sterilise them with a quick blast in a microwave.
- Organise your power leads: Slackly fold each cable back and forth a few times and push all the loops through a cardboard tube. Depending on the thickness of your cable, you can get a few in each tube.
- Cut toilet roll tubes in half (and kitchen roll tubes into quarters) and use them as plant pots for seedlings. They're as good as peat pots - and better for the envrionment and cheaper too. For the bottom you can use scrunched-up newspaper. It's not foolproof and you have to be careful when carrying it from greenhouse to bed but it just pretty much dissolves when wet enough so the roots don't have any problem growing through. Or fold the toilet paper bottoms with easy origami.
- Make a low-tech desk tidy: Stick three together with differing heights, paint and varnish if you wish, and stick them to a circle of card.
- With the longer kitchen roll tubes, you can store a bunch of carrier bags inside each tube. Leave a tube of bags near every bin in your house.
- cover both ends with several sheets of greaseproof paper and rubber bands after half-filling with pistacio nut shells to make a percussion instrument. Decorate to taste. If you smear the outside with clay, then dry, you've got something that looks pretty ethnic indeed.
- Make a unique envelope! Without breaking it, you can flatten it and address it, then staple or (thoroughly!) tape the ends shut. As long as the postage and address are correct, it will go through the postal service as intended.
- Use them as molds for making giant crayons. Separate old crayons into basic primary colors, melt them down and pour the wax into the tubes with waxed paper on the ends held with elastic. This uses up old crayons well, too. And you can, if you prefer, not separate the colours but create a new one from a mix of crayons - try to stick green with blues and reds with purples/pinks, ie. crayons with the same tones, so your new colour doesn't end up murky.
- Make Christmas crackers from them (you'll be shown how next week. Not this week! It's not Christmas yet, silly! Let's not worry about Christmassy things until it's nearly too late!).
- If you have an open fire, stuff them with pine cones - they'll make a fragrant, wonderful kindling.
- Use them as a material in cartapesta.
- Make a pretty tube gift box or surprise gift package.
- Smoke weed? Make a bong. Cut a small hole approximately the diameter of your pinky finger near one end. Make a tinfoil bowl and fit it into the hole. Poke a few small holes in the screen with a pin or needle. Put a small amount of weed in the bowl. Light it. (Cupping the end of the roll with the palm of your hand) Inhale, letting in small amounts of air from the 'cupped' end as needed. This one is only for drug-takers, who need to recycle things so they can save their money for drugs.
More: Arts & Crafts, How-Tos and Odd Hobbies on Mookychick
Lampshade!
Gift box!
Christmas crackers!
Slightly different kind of gift box!
Cable tidying thing!





