I would suspect a lot of these compartments would be far too shallow for most container plants but small rocks could be interspersed with the deeper planting for good effect. It’s certainly a great innovative way of recycling an old ‘tackle’ box instead of going out and buying loads of pots and it gets plus points for portability.

As featured on Craft with an easy to follow tutorial.

One of Green Renters mantras is “recycle, re-use, reclaim” and there’s plenty of sources for finding and passing on no-longer-required items from Op-shops, to garage sales and services such as Freecycle. Now there’s a new and bang up to date service called Yoink! featuring a fancy website and iPhone app.

It’s very simple to use, sign up and then provide brief 140 character (sound familiar?) descriptions of items you have to give and each item will also be geotagged, allowing users to filter and view items based upon their neighbourhood. Then contact the ‘giver’ and arrange collection.

We haven’t tried the system to conclusion yet as, to be blunt, we don’t need anything right now, but it certainly looks very simple to use, well planned, designed and hopefully, a hit!

Energy efficient light bulbs (otherwise known as compact fluorescent light bulbs or CFL’s ) contain a small amount of mercury which is a toxic metal and every product containing mercury should be handled with care.

Recycling is the best way to dispose of used CFLs.

In Victoria you should take them to your nearest Council Civic Centre for recycling. Or you can take fluorescent tubes to a Detox Your Home permanent drop-off facility,such as the  Darebin Resource Recovery Centre. It is free.

You can also take your fluorescent tubes to a Detox Your Home mobile collection.

NSW households should utilise the free household chemical “Cleanout” program managed by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change. These are held regularly, and details are available on the www.cleanout.com.au website.

As a last resort, burnt-out or broken CFLs should be wrapped in newspaper and placed inside a plastic bag, firmly sealed, and then placed into your household rubbish.

You should NOT place CFLs in your kerbside recycling collection because they can break during transport and contaminate recyclable items.

CDs have become a bit obsolete of late with the increase of digital downloading, so what do you do with them then? They can’t go in the normal recycled (only a couple councils let you do this) and if you throw them in the bin then they will end up in landfill… not a good option.
Ever wondered what to do with you old, scratched or unloved CDs and DVDs? Most people have a stash of old data CDs at the back of their drawer that are in need of a good recycling! So Eco Innovators has organised the first CD Swap Meet Melbourne to be held on Thursday 4th march 2010 at a nice little drinking hole called the Edinburgh Castle Hotel in Brunswick.

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II was excited to see this living wreath on Design Sponge this week. It looks pretty easy according to the tutorial but I’m going to amend a current wreath I have rather than buy any materials. I’m making one of these tonight. It’s a great way to reuse garden cuttings from the last few days and looks great!

We’re big fans of the ‘make do and mend’ ethos here at Green Renters, but I’m not sure I’d wear these creations out of the house! Good to see such an important issue covered in a mainstream fashion magazine however!

(The photos are by Tim Walker for Vogue Nov 2009)

As a renter I don’t really see the point of store bought Christmas trees. They’re synthetic and kinda ugly and we have no where to store them inbetween Christmases (like most rental properties, storage cupboards are lacking). I don’t see in the point of a cut tree, and the potted variety seem to die off in the summer heat anyway.

I also should mention that we don’t really have the space for a big Christmas tree, our living room is quite small!

So I was excited to see these photos of DIY christmas trees using household objects…

The first three are from here. The ladder looks great and I like it as it doesn’t take up too much space. The second photograph is of an old drying rack, I think something similar could definitely be made with an old clothes horse!

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