There are some things that I hate to toss into the recycling bin, even though I know (hope, really) that they’ll be re-used as material for other things.
Egg cartons are one of these items. We go through a lot of eggs in our house and it seems silly to throw this useful-looking container into the bin after just a few days of use.
Although recycling is the most popular of the three R’s, reduce is definitely the most important and reuse is the most overlooked. Because it can be hard to come up with more than one or two uses for a common container like egg cartons, I decided to see what the other creative minds on the internet had to say.
Here are the surprising possibilities:
1. Seed Starting Pots: Egg cartons are the perfect size for starting plants for your fall or winter garden. You can also use them to store your keep your bulbs safe after you’ve pulled them up for the winter.
2. Recyclable Lamp: Paper egg cartons can be moistened and broken down into their original pulp form. Then the pulp can be reformed and dried into many useful and creative shapes. What other things could you mold out of recycled egg carton pulp?
3. Decorative Fairy Flower Lights: If you’re crafty or you’ve got a fairy-lover in your family, these dainty lights made from an egg carton’s cups are sure to be a hit!
4. Packing Material: If you move as much as we do, you get pretty good at improvising packing materials. Egg cartons are a great substitute for newspaper or packing peanuts when you need to hold breakable items steady.
5. Bulletin Board: Those with busy lives or home offices know how helpful a bulletin board can be when keeping important papers organized.
6. Storing Eggs: Nope that’s not a typo: How about saving up your egg cartons and donating them to a local egg farmer or friend raising backyard chickens? One word of caution: if you swap one carton every time you buy one, this may mean that you never have extra egg cartons again!
Bonus! It’s a little more involved, but you should definitely check out this example of using egg cartons as medium for modern art.
Tell Us: Share your tips for reusing egg cartons or anything else you might have around the house!
Image Credit: Flickr – john loo
I use them to sort things with my kids and for math activities. You can put the numbers 1-12 on the bottom and then have scavenger hunts, counting, adding, etc.. We also cut the clear ones in to six cup sections and use that as a tray for science projects. LOVE egg cartons.
May i add a 7th way to recycle them ?
I use them often to make ring boxes and posted a small tutorial for making them in my blog here:
https://microbio-noar.blogspot.com/2011/08/caixas-para-aneis-amigas-do-ambienteeco.html
Hope you like it 🙂
May i add a 7th way to recycle them ? I use them for making ring boxes and have written a small tutorial posted in my blog here:
https://microbio-noar.blogspot.com/2011/08/caixas-para-aneis-amigas-do-ambienteeco.html
Hope you like them 🙂
This is great! Thanks for sharing Helena 🙂
Any chance you can edit your post so that it doesn’t read like you think only girls would like fairy lights? Let’s reduce the amount of sexism in the world while we recycle and reuse.