Click here to see what the Cutteslowe Community Centre Art Club did with them!

Thanks to everyone for your ingenious ideas - Judy suggested sending them to the Orinoco Scrap Store (see below) and Orinoco have declared themselves happy with this prospect, so that's what we're going to do. Thanks Judy - chocolate is on its way. Have a look at all the ideas below!

Our printing processes at Daily Info leave us with a surplus of sturdy cardboard rolls, 92cm long x 8cm diameter. We would like them to serve some useful purpose in the world instead of being thrown away. Can anyone think of anything?

A gentleman comes and takes some to make tunnels in his model railways occasionally, but he only wants 2 each year and we produce about 100...

A box of chocolates for the best suggestion received before 30th November 2005. Please email [email protected] with the subject "suggestion" (and if anyone wants any rolls, do let us know - 01865 241133).

Current suggestions include:

Poster storage tubes for students during vacation.
- Suggested by Katie

Sell them back to cardboard roll suppliers.
- Suggested by Anita Joice

According to the Blakes 7 webpage you could use them to make Teleportation Bracelets......

Or pet shop are selling Chubes - yes, rodent friendly folk actually pay good money to kit out little Gordon the Gopher's cage with a cardboard roll - £2.75 for a Giant Chube! You could diversify the business.

Or you could contribute to building a real school out of cardboard - http://www.cardboardschool.co.uk

- Suggested by Shona


You could use it as packaging for cans of beer and then sell beer by the meter, i.e. a roll would have for example 6-8 cans inside it.

Give it to the Oxford Union - every year they have a poster sale and they could package the rolled poster into the cardboard rolls whenever someone buys a poster.

Stick a stand on the bottom of each roll so that it can stand vertically and then cut horizontally bits out of it, so that it could serve as a CD stand (though requires a bit of work).

They can be easily cut into slices 15cm long each and when put on a desk, they can serve as pencil holders. You could give them away for free to students. I'm sure they'd love it. You could maybe put some transparent stickers on them (with calendar or advertisments).

- all suggested by Tomasz


Cut down into shorter sections, ideal disposable plant pots. Use to grow anything from seed - courgettes, tomato plants etc and then you just plant the whole thing out, cardboard tube and all, when the risk of frost is over..

- Suggested by several people: this version from Fran

Ideal for tree saplings e.g oak, walnut, beech saplings you find and want to grow on. I saw a programme about the tactics used by competitive vegetable growers e.g. the longest parsnip, and they used a similar tube (they used plastic rainwater pipe) to train the tap root.

Champion leek growers also use similar systems so that they can continually top up the soil height and so artificially increase the height of the white section of the leek root which only forms under the soil surface.

- Suggested by Fran


Fabulous fodder for the worms, slugs et al on the many compost heaps in gardens and allotments around the city (once the rain's made them nice and soggy and chewy that is!).
- Suggested by Rebecca


You might be able to pass them on to artists to carry rolled-up pictures, documents or maps.
- Suggested by Gaynor and also from Katie


Recycle them!

 - a very sensible suggestion from several people, but first received from Bryan


Spaghetti jar

Table legs

Cap the ends and use as a protective case for your pool / snooker cue
- Suggested by Sue

Deluxe hamster runs for fat hamsters or other large rodents

Moving rollers for bulky but relatively light objects

Launching tubes for custom-built fireworks
- Daily Info staff


Never mind the hamster runs, what about using it for a 'Bat the Rat' stall!
Or it looks from the picture that they would be good for a mock sword fight...
- Suggested by Anna

I am sure your rolls would be really well used by the Oxfordshire Scrapstore.  I know they do really good arts work with any materials donated.  I found the following info on the web:

Orinoco - The Oxfordshire Scrapstore is an independent charity and company limited by guarantee that collects and reuses good quality, commercial and domestic discarded objects from businesses and householders in Oxfordshire. These discarded objects often serve as valuable resources for children art and school projects as well as useful and creative projects for adults. Reusing objects which would normally end up in local land-fills also improves the Oxford environment.

Phone: 07960-661-748 http://www.oxorinoco.org/

- Suggested by Judy


Try offering them to Architects Offices (to keep their blue prints); would save them money.
- Suggested by Lucy