Wired's How-To Wiki guides newcomers gently into the soft terrain of composting, a great way to recycle biodegradable goods and create some of the best growing soil around. You can get started with something as simple and low-cost as a trash bag, the authors note:

Just fill it up with a good mixture of browns (paper and plant pieces) and greens (kitchen scraps), soak it down, punch a few air holes and wait three months. Viola! Compost.

The wiki has more detailed advice for those who want to keep a tidier pile, or learn more about what makes for great material—one easy-to-find example, as previously posted, is non-glossy, low-colour junk mail. Are you composting? What's your setup? Let us know in the comments. Photo by normanack.

read more »

Here's a competition which looks right up Lifehacker's alley. As part of a honours course at Swinburne uni, a group of students are creating a book called "101 things to do with 'old' technology" and they're running a competition to get ideas from the public.

Get creative and make us your own little sketch of what you'd do with an "old grey box". You can be as serious, as funny, or as strange as you like with your entries. All entries will be published in the book for our Swinburne University Honours project, and your name will be published with it too, if you wish.

Entries are in the form of black and white line drawings - head on over to the post at Melbourne Maniacs for further details on how to enter. Entries close on May 26.

Competition: 101 Things to do with Old Technology [Melbourne Maniacs]

We asked earlier this week what disposable items you had found creative re-uses for, and the answers are in. Not surprisingly, some of you have some pretty crafty uses for household goods that usually end up at the curb. From CD-R spindles to corks, twist-ties to tissue boxes, lots of supposedly one-use items can save you money, free up space, and be seriously handy when the need arises. After the jump, a roundup of our readers' waste-reducing reuses. Yogurt photo by Dan4th, all others by How can I recycle this.

read more »

A reader at frugal finance blog Get Rich Slowly suggests shredding your junk mail and using it to mulch your garden. To avoid killing your garden with inks and metals leeching off the shredded paper, the author uses the following guidelines:

• I only shred the non-glossy stuff, and try to avoid coloured ink as much as possible. Since I'm shredding to avoid identity theft in the first place, and credit applications these days contain coloured ink, I can't stay 100% black and white, but I can accept that.

read more »

Over at the TipNut blog, they've rounded up 20 supposedly disposable items and how to reuse them, in ways both common (newspapers for kitty litter liners) and unique (greasing pans with used butter wrappers). There's a handful of items that might make you think twice before trashing, but with so many products turning the way of use-and-toss these days, there's got to be far more creative reusable hacks out there. So I put it to you, dear readers: What items do you never toss before getting a little bit more out of them? How do you save money (and save landfill space) without spending a lot of time? What web sites do you turn to for reusable inspiration? Drop your tips, ideas, and links in the comments, and we'll consider them for a future post.

read more »

In honour of Earth Day, Yahoo put together a "Free Is Good" web site promoting previously mentioned Freecycle, local mailing lists of folks who give away stuff they don't need. Pop your city and state into the search engine and get a map back of nearby groups. The Freecycle groups themselves are Yahoo Groups, so you have to join the group using your Yahoo ID to see messages (and often a moderator has to approve the membership request.) From there you can offer stuff you'd throw away anyway to give to your neighbours for free, and take them up on their offers, too.

read more »

Do-it-yourselfer proyZ posts a step-by-step for building a lightweight, sturdy laptop stand for a measly two bucks using a couple of twisted wire easels he picked up from the local dollar store and a few common household items. If you didn't already find a solution that worked for you in our top 10 DIY laptop stands, maybe this is the stand you were waiting for.

read more »

Crafter Amanda turns simple plastic grocery bags into tote bags, wallets, floor cushions, and waterproof liners for beach bags—by fusing them together with an iron. Cut, flatten and layer six to eight bags on the ironing board, place parchment paper over them, and iron the whole stack to meld it into a useful, reusable thicker plastic for sewing together every which way. See the post for examples of what you can do with the stuff. Don't forget you can also crochet grocery bags, too.

read more »

Web site Rehash is like an online swap meet for clothes and accessories. According to the site, the average American throws away around 68 lbs. of clothes per year—Rehash is a place to recycle those clothes and get something in return. Once you've joined, you can list anything you want to exchange, along with items you're looking for. Rehash trades can happen either in person or through shipping, though the site doesn't have anything in place to help you with shipping. Obviously Goodwill is always there to take your clothes donations so that you aren't trashing your unused clothes every year, but if you're looking to get something in return, Rehash may be a good place to do it. Thanks Antonella!

read more »

If your pantry's overrun with plastic grocery bags and you're feeling crafty, break out the crochet hooks and turn it into a tote bag like the one pictured. Split your bags into colours (like the red Target bags in one pile, white in another), and cut the bags into strips to make your "yarn," and hook away. I got to hold one of these in my hand, and what I'd normally write off as a cheesy craft turned out to be sturdy, stretchy, and actually quite a cute conversation starter. After the jump, so photos and links to patterns.

read more »