Thinking About Recycling

We've talked before about recycling. We all do it (or most of us at least try). Some communities are better at it than others. Mine used to recycle all 7 types of plastic (including recycled plastic bags and styrofoam). Then they switched companies and now I have to toss the styrofoam (ugh! I try my best not to buy anything that includes styrofoam as part of the packaging) and I take my plastic bags, when I forget to bring reusable ones, to the grocery store recycling bins.

Some things, however, are just not easy to recycle. One of those is the cap from a plastic milk jug.

Image by Luce-Beaulieu

The jug itself can go in the recycling bin, but not the cap. I hate throwing them away, so I've done a search of the Internet trying to come up with ideas. There were crafts, many of them...how shall I put this...less than lovely (but I hate saying that, because at least the person was trying to reuse). And there were some that I really liked but were so much work that I doubted I'd ever actually use them, such as this lamp shade made of...okay, mineral water bottle caps (close enough) and this clock.

But a few were interesting enough and easy enough that I could see trying them out. So here's the list:

How to Reuse a Plastic Milk Bottle Cap
1. Use them to replace missing game pieces or use two different colors to create your own checkers game.

2. They can be used to add height to a planter (when you put a small, ugly pot inside a decorative one and the inside one is too short or...to put beneath a planter to keep it off the ground).

3. One woman suggested that they make good scrubbers for tough spots on pans and that they won't scratch the surface. I haven't tried this.

4. Stringing them together (sideways?) for a necklace. (There's another link below in which this was done).

5. Refrigerator magnets: Cut a piece of a wine bottle cork big enough to fill most of the empty space on the inside of the cork and glue it inside the bottle cap. Glue a magnet on top of that. Then decorate the front of the cap with beads or wiggly eyes and a marker or yarn mouth. You could also put stick on letters on the top or make your own letters and glue them on. Anything that suits your fancy in terms of decoration would work (stickers, interesting pictures, drawings). Note: magnets can be quite dangerous and even deadly for young children if swallowed, so proceed with caution.

6. My personal favorite for young children is to create a memory game: Glue pictures or stickers inside the caps (a pair of matching stickers for every two caps). Then turn the caps upside down, and you have a homemade memory matching game.

As noted above, I also liked this necklace which appeared on the Michael's site (and I really wanted to add the image, but I didn't want Michael's suing me, so please click through. It was pretty and colorful. It's for 100 day, and I thought it was rather clever).

So now, the floor is open. Can you help me think of more ways to use plastic milk bottle caps? I really hate throwing those in the trash (and the plastic collars, too. I keep thinking that there must be some use for those).