Who wants £250?


Do you? Well I know how you can get it and I have faith that you’re all in with a great chance.
You are the champions of reuse; that’s pretty obvious from some of the amazing comments we have had on our site. When you’re not using toilet roll inners to grow carrots or making face masks from your yogurt pots, you’re out there turning plastic cake containers into seed propagators and stuffing teddies with old tights.
Well now you have the opportunity to turn your fabulous and innovative ideas into a £250 spending spree. Over on Ooffoo, which is an offshoot of the utterly fabulous Natural Collection (I did a review on the site a while ago), there is a reuse competition going on.
All you have to do is register and post away. Be sure to use the ‘reuse competition’ tag and you can enter as many times as you like.
You don’t need to be a writer, just get your idea down, upload a photograph if you can and read other’s amazing ideas while you are there! The competition closes on 1st April 2009.
Some of my favourites are the hair for the sock puppet made from veg box string by Emma Cooper and the video cassette DVD holder by Beth Wright.
Why not pop over and enter the competition yourself?
Dear Aunty Green
Please help!! Following the success of last year’s marvellous marmelade I made some more this year and now find myself with 10 jars of unset marmelade. How can I avoid putting this in landfill? (make that 9 jars as I’ve found a recipe for marmelade and oat cake) Can any of your readers advise? Suggestions on a piece of toast please!
Hi Doormouse; fear not – you can rescue your marmalade. 🙂
Empty it all back into the pan with a couple of teaspoons of citric or tartaric acid. An asian grocer, chemist or wine making supplier such as http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk will provide these.
And re-set it. Do the wrinkle test, or whichever test you use to check when it is ready and it should be fine.
The recipe for marmalade and oat cake sounds delicious mind you!
Good luck!
Doormouse, there is lots of information on this site too. It’s well worth a read – I’m not sure if you are a seasoned marmalade maker, of if this is your first time, but there are lots of tips to be found:
http://www.deliaonline.com/messageboard/7/29770/thread.html
Oooh I wonder if my little stocking fella will count. Remember him from Christmas… And he comes with a poem too. I could do with a £250 spending spree too. 😀 x
Hi Mrs Green,
Reusable packaging probably has the biggest impact. Since the supermarkets are slow to change, we consumers have to lead the charge. Who has the best example from all our ehthusiasts?
@Almost Mrs Average: Mrs A – go ahead and enter; your stocking filla fellas were great. Any child (or adult) would love one LOL!
@John Costigane: I’m sure Peter from Junkk.com could come up with some pretty neat ideas!
Does using your ugly green giant wheelie bin as a not very attractive ornament count as reuse? 😉
I’ve just realised that we’re into week 5 of not putting it out! Decision time on Thursday …. do we dump or shall we hang on another week? 🙂 🙂
Decisions, decisions ……………. 😉
Wahee! 5 weeks – go you! Go on, be a devil and push it to six 😉
Ooh, 5 weeks, Poppy!! YAY!! Hang on to six, or more!! (The bragging rights alone are worth the wait, no?!)
/unless it really smells, uhm, unelegantly..?/
Interesting competition! I’m not really big about reUSE, more about reDUCe, will be interesting to see everybody’s entries though…
/okay, Mum did knit a carpet out of nylon tights lol.. & we once did puppets, as I was wee.. Does that count?/
@Layla: A carpet out of nylon tights is amazing Layla! Go over and enter it – you never know 😉
Hi Mrs Green,
Letsrecycle announced a move towards Zero Waste Easter Eggs by producers. There are Zero Waste types and reduced waste entries. It is a big plus, having the industry thinking Zero Waste. We can do our bit to make it a success.
Hi John, well this is great news. I think Easter eggs is the bane of many people’s lives. Even if you’re not into the zero waste issue, the fact that the majority of what you pay for is air and packaging gets to many people.
I shall go and have a look at the page and post about it later in the week.
Thank you!
Dont mention it, Mrs G. This is the place to contact most enthusiasts, quickly. Though we are not part of the article, I think that our festive campaign was a good contribution.
@John Costigane: @Mrs Green:
I bought a job lot of EggHeads. They are made by Cadbury’s and are just foil wrapped chocolate eggs with no box or plastic 🙂
@Poppy: Great, Poppy. The idea is to promote the Zero Waste types and nowhere better than on this site. I have also started a topic on SkyNews forum.
There should be a range of big eggs with good packaging, as well as the Cadbury’s type.
My aim this year is not to buy eggs in anything but completely recyclable packaging. #Even my fiance who loves the very expensive Belgian choccie ones. I normally only give one smallish egg per each of my three sons anyway, and give them each some cash to spend how they want (or save!). I tell ’em if they must have chocolate, that it’s much better value to go and buy a big bar of choccie wrapped in ordinary paper and foil that I can shove out in the rb.
Well I think from all the comments on this thread we need to start a new post about Easter, focusing on the excessive egg packaging.
We’ll do that in a couple of weeks and you can all share your thoughts, so that we can build up a really good resource for people 🙂