Recycling coffee cans, oatmeal containers, cereal boxes etc

[HEChicken]

I like to reduce, reuse, recycle as much as possible. When I needed a feeder/waterer for the chooks, I begged buckets from my grocery store, bought a vegie/dip container from my local thrift store, and they turned into great feeders and waterers.

I end up with a lot of cereal boxes, some coffee cans and quite a few of those round oatmeal containers (mostly the bigger size but sometimes the little size). When I kept rats and snakes, I had lots of uses for these types of things but now...not so much. I hate throwing away so much so I'm looking for inspiration as to what these items can be used for.

So - please tell me what you reuse these types of items for and if possible, post pics. The use can be chicken related or not - doesn't matter.

 

[raroo]

I just toss them in the blue bin and the recycling truck comes by and picks it up.

I'm not very creative, can't really think of much use for those types of things. Kudos to you though, the chicken feeder and waterer is a neat idea!

 

[saddina]

Oatmeal containers: Chick playgrounds! You can cut the end off to make a tube, place in brooder, and the chicks will race around and play hide and seek in them. Toilet paper tubes work for quail chicks too.

Coffee cans: punch a few holes in the bottom, cover in light paint if you want, and plant herbs that get leggy. Mints, basil, anything that wants to spread will grow well in a can.

Cereal boxes: if the inside of the box has a rough texture, you can open them up and use those to line brooders, and then toss once they get poopy. If you have kids, use this instead of newspaper to cover your table during messy art projects.

 

[Chicky Tocks]

Be sure and toss the used poopy cereal boxes into your compost pile!

The plastic Foldgers coffee tubs make excellent paint cans or are great for pouring in the paint thinner in to clean your brushes.
I'm thinking they'd work great as a chicken feeder if you use a little ingenuity.

 

[Boyd]

coffee containers - as Saddi said, use them for planters or seed starters... You can use the round metal ones for other purposes .. muahhahaha. My big chest freezer always has one in there...... When I got fishing, I put a hamady sack inside the metal can, and when I am cleaning the fish, I throw the gunk in the sack. Then I throw the lid over the top, toss it in the freezer and night before the garbage goes out we empty the "slops bucket".

found out quite by accident that my chickens like fish gunk. I guess these guys will eat anything....... including a chicken taco I was eating on the back porch one night while reading

cannibals.

If I can burn it, it generally goes into the firepit or the burn barrel. The ash is used in my garden.

 

[HEChicken]

Great ideas - keep 'em coming! I love the using the coffee cans as planters idea - I am always looking for new ways to grow stuff in a small, suburban lot, since space is always an issue.

 

[Tala]

We don't have a good recycling program here.

~Aluminum cans go in a big bin for scrap recycling
~Steel cans go into a 5 gal bucket on my porch (I rinse them out good first) and they can also be sold with scrap iron
~Glass jars (spaghetti sauce, etc.) are typically either used for drinking glasses, or storing dry goods like beans, rice, noodles, nuts, etc. in small, manageable amounts. Eventually we get too many though and I wish the city had a recycle program for them.
~Most paper and cardboard end up getting burned or composted, if burned the ashes are composted. We really don't have a lot of paper trash.

My "problem" area is plastic. Plastic bottles, plastic bags, plastic meat packages, etc. I hate to burn plastic and I also hate how it sits around in the landfill. If our city had a recycling program I would want them to take plastic and glass bottles.
Two liter bottles and gallon bottles I generally freeze ice in or reuse somehow, but we end up drinking coke from bottles when we're in the car and they pile up. We use a Brita filter and drink tap water from it, and DH takes water to work in a reusable bottle so no water bottles here.

All in all though, there are 3 smallish families sharing one "family size" trash barrel (us, my parents in-law and my sister-in law) so we can't be doing all that bad.

 

[redhen]

I use the round oatmeal tubes or bread crumb tubes for shipping my eggs in...I bubble wrap the eggs..then place them in the tubes..
then put the tubes in a box and ship...so far noone has gotten any broken eggs. they really work good for shipping eggs.

 

[HEChicken]

Quote:
I know what you mean. Right now I'm trying to come up with ideas for the bottles too. This year I've had a tough time in the garden with my seedlings being eaten by various beetles and caterpillars. DH and I go out every evening and manually remove all we can find and feed them to the chooks but...I had an idea that I could create "mini-greenhouses" from the plastic bottles. I.e., cut them around the middle to be left with a plastic dome and pop that over the top of the seedlings to provide them a little protection in the first few weeks until they're established. Multi size bottles mean multi sized greenhouses. The plastic edges could be pushed down into the soil a little to give them stability. I haven't tried it yet but plan to save my plastic bottles between now and Spring and will try it out then. Has anyone tried this or have any insight into how it might work?

We don't have such an issue with plastic bags. I save them all and they all get re-used. First, I take them shopping with me and my local grocery store gives me 5c credit for each bag I reuse. Then, years ago I bought a little trash can frame that is designed to hold a grocery store sized bag with handles. That is what we use for our kitchen trash. So instead of buying trash bags, we just reuse our grocery store sized bags for our trash. Yes, it means more trips to take the trash out, but that's what little boys were made for

)

Bread bags (or any bread product) I keep in a kitchen drawer and use for my kids' school lunches. In other words, when I make a sandwich, the sandwich goes into an old bread bag and then into their lunch box.

The smaller bags (like fruit & veg bags, or the bags carrots come from when you buy them), we use as dog poop bags. I.e., when we're walking the dogs, we grab a couple of those and when the dogs poop, well, does this need more explanation? (I can't believe people actually buy special bags at the expensive pet stores to carry with them to pick up poop

 

[Sunny Side Up]

One way to reduce waste is to be more thoughtful & selective when making purchases. Try not to buy things with excessive packaging. For example, if you're tossing out a lot of empty oatmeal tubes, perhaps you could buy your oats in bulk in paper sacks. I know choices are limited in many areas, but see what you can do to eliminate wasted packaging however much you can.

Another way to reduce waste is to give disposable items at least one more use before discarding. Every little bit helps. Re-using the plastic bread bags, the containers & bottles at least once instead of a new purchased product makes a difference.

I find lots of uses for disposable items in my gardens, for planting pots, water saucers, and chicken-guards. Lots of other things can be used for chicken food & water dishes, and scoops for feed.

I love cereal-box cardboard, it has dozens of uses in craft & household projects. It can also go in the compost bin or laid flat in the garden to block the weeds.