Sunday, September 14, 2014

Free, Eco-Friendly, Re-Purposed Shaving Accessories

It's amazing what you can do with the lowly Greek-yogurt container, a tin can, a plastic prescription vial, or an unused specimen cup.

The Single-Serving Greek-Yogurt Container

I use one clean yogurt cup to hold the four razors that I keep handy in the
medicine cabinet for regular use. (My used-blade bank is in the background.)

Another yogurt cup does double duty. In preparation for lathering, I soak the brush
bristles in cool tap water as I set my gear out on the bathroom counter. When I'm
ready for making lather, on those rare mornings when I need a separate lathering
bowl, the same yogurt cup does the trick.

Yet another yogurt cup holds shave soap that has been pressed or melted in,
and in which I can then make lather from that particular puck.

New or Re-Used Prescription Vials

My Palmolive shave stick as it's stored in the 16-dram vial (no cap
necessary). Palmolive provides the green ring as a base for the stick.

Here's how the Palmolive shave stick looks when out of the re-purposed
vial, as when being used during a shave.

I drilled ventilation holes in this 40-dram vial -- both in the bottom and the
twist-off top. When the vial top is on, the brand-new Arko stick length just fits. 

This 30-dram vial holds overflow blade inventory (in the medicine cabinet),
which will eventually be filed into the blade-on-deck cup, which is shown below.
(My large reserves of blade inventory are in a shoe box in my closet.)

New, Unused Specimen Cup

During my recent surgery, the hospital stored my wedding ring in this clean
specimen cup, which now holds my five primary blade brands, pre-sorted in a
repeating order. When I recycle an old blade, from this container I just take the next
one on deck, which in this case is the SuperMax Titanium closest to the camera.

Tin Can


I hope you don't throw used blades in the trash, but instead recycle them.
I put mine in a tin-can blade bank made from a tomato soup container. The slot
is difficult to see, but it's just below the lip of the can nearest the camera. After years,
when the can is full, I'll just tap down with a hammer on the top lip above the slot
to close it up, then recycle the can -- blades and all. I found the 19th-century-style
label somewhere on the Internet, printed it, and glued it on the bare can.

That's it for today! Happy eco-friendly shaving!

1 comment:

  1. I noticed today that a cake frosting "can" (polypropylene) could potentially make the soap cup into a "scuttle," as the diameters match. Of course the cup will want to float... perhaps the frosting can's lid would secure everything?

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