What to do with your free Metro?

A lot of people complain about Metro, the free newspaper that you get in public transports in most large British cities. The idea is that you can either take it with you and share it with colleagues at work or put it back where you found it or in another Metro stand (depends if you travel by bus, train or underground…) for someone else to “enjoy”. But unfortunately, a lot of them end up tucked between the seats and windows or scattered all over the bus or train floor and are simply binned at the end of the day by the bus and train companies instead of being recycled.

I always take mine back with me and I have actually come up with a few ways to recycle or re-use my free supply of newspaper pages. All of them on the allotment of course…

- You can shred them and add to your compost heap. It does actually help with the compost balance if you’ve added too much “green” material and is particularly useful after adding a lot of grass clippings to avoid your pile turning into a sorry slimy mess.

- Shredded again, you can lay it under your strawberry plants as a mulch. It also helps to keep the strawberries clean and mud-free. Cheaper than straw and get people talking!

- You can lay them on the ground in thick layers to act as a biodegradable weed suppressant. In thick enough layers, they will last over the winter and you can dig them in when they start decomposing. As you can see on the picture, I also use cardboard to the same effect. For no-dig (lazy) beds, you can also cover them with topsoil, compost or manure and they will slowly decompose with time.

- You can use them to make biodegradable seed pots. There are a lot of detailed instructions available on Internet, more or less advanced. And you can even buy paper potters as you can see on the picture (not mine; I’m more of an origami or “roll around a cardboard cylinder” kind of girl). It certainly beats peat pots for eco-friendliness and is really versatile as you can make them in all sorts of heights and sizes to accommodate all your plants needs! By the way, egg boxes are good too for little plug plants and toilet rolls and kitchen paper tubes are ideal for peas, beans and sweet peas, which all need room for long roots.

- You can roll them up to make thick cylinders which you can use to blanch leeks or celery. In the picture, this weekend handiwork!

I think that’s about it now. Have you got any more ideas to use up old newspapers at home or in the garden?