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Seems like a shame to throw away and must have a use.
Depending on where you live, this may be the start of your plastic-free/no-waste journey. (You'd obviously need a place where you can shop plastic-free somewhere near you )
One possibility is that, any of these jars that were vacuum sealed in the first place, they can easily be re-vacuum sealed with a cheap vacuum chamber/hand pump combo. it's not an appropriate preservation method for all the kinds of things that originally came in the jars, but will keep dry goods from oxidizing/etc.
Nice collecion you have there! Just got my hand on a large cardbox worth of jars. Almost all of them have caps as well. My plan is to slowly clean and fill them up, just like you did! Also I recently found out (by a foodwaste prevention program) that I have plastic-free shop not too far away from me.
I know you were probably joking, but as a PSA I will add that you NEVER dip any ‘bits’ or any body part in plaster in a closed, rigid container! 😬 A mold should be made with alginate, silicone, or other resilient material. The plaster is what would be poured into the mold afterwards, to make a casting. thanks.
Yep.
And if you knew it was bad, but didn’t know how bad:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/oct/12/girl-loses-fingers-school-art
Oh my god, TIL it is that bad
A school was ordered to pay nearly £20,000 in fines and legal costs today after a pupil lost all but two of her fingers in an art lesson.
The penalty was increased on the Giles foundation school in Boston, Lincolnshire, because staff failed to report the "catastrophic" incident, involving plaster of paris, to the Health and Safety Executive.
WTF was it increased from, £2000? Maybe I'm just used to settlements in the hundreds of millions of USD but that seems insultingly low, even for 15 years ago.
Edit: OMG 2009 was fifteen years ago...
This person molds
Glass recycling is pretty good. Near complete recovery of the material. Plastic is basically impossible to recover, but glass and metals are generally very recyclable.
Just put it in the bin. Let the city recycle it. You'll get it back as a beer bottle or another glass bottle like this one, or something else entirely.
The Internet has ruined me. I will not elaborate further.
Cum jar?
One man one jar. Please don't look it up.
So I went looking for the date 1 Man 1 Jar was released and I found out that it has an IMDB page with predictably silly reviews. Technically it's NSFW but it's all text.
But yeah you're like 15 years too late for me lol.
There are two well known uses for a jar on the internet. You don't want any of them.
I save them up all year, and come Christmas / Lunar New Year, I bake cookies then hand out jars filled with cookies to coworkers and neighbors.
It turns out that my wife and I consume exactly enough jam in a year to balance out the jar egress for the maximum number of social connections we can sustain.
If I have a spare, I might make mango chutney. It doesn't need to be vacuum sealed if you just make one jar and eat it reasonably soon.
I suppose you could engineer them to be solar garden lights too. There ought to be enough room for the panel on top of the lid, a battery and circuit on the underside, and then you hang an LED in there.
I once saw a video or a guy had a jar. I'm going to leave it a surprise but he put it somewhere. Maybe you could do that?
In the bin?
Definitely in a chute
Put a piece of food in, take a picture every day for a year and post it in youtube.
Make one of those sealed jar terrarium ecosystems.
Why, uh. Why was that your first thought.
Life, uh, finds a way.
You know all those little bits and bobs you have laying around, like screws you might use one day, a pen that probably has half a page of barely visible words left and those paperclips with the ripped box? Them, you put all of them in there, it will be frustrating to get what you need out, but it will be worth it.
Wash it, pour boiling water over it, put hot jam or other preserves inside, it will hold all winter. Just make sure the lid is concaved when the jam cools down - that means it seals well.
This is how I store my collection of randomly sized screws, nuts, and bolts.
Collect loose change maybe
Seems like a shame to throw away
Don’t throw away glass! It’s almost always recyclable if you cannot find a reuse for it!
Also, if you have a local “Buy Nothing” group I can guarantee someone will take it off your hands. My wife has gone deep into the Buy Nothing world, and pretty much anything someone takes. Broken espresso machine? Someone wanted it. Glass containers from old individual serving tiramisu? Someone wanted it. Someone online said they had old broken paving stones, someone took them. It’s amazing how often you can find someone else to reuse something you might not have a use for.
Between Buy Nothing, industrial composting, and recycling, we end up with a surprising amount of the waste from our house staying in the “Reuse, Recycle” part of the waste hierarchy (since composting is technically recycling), and very little actual trash.
I use them for grease after cooking. Or for drinking glasses when I can't be bothered to run the dishwasher.
Fill the jars with loose screws, nails and bolts then screw the lid into the bottom of a shelf above your workbench. Screw jar into lids and voila you're living in 1972
Look into sterilization, you might have to get something for under the lid like go between. But lemon curd, jams, marmalades and pickles can all have a pretty long shelf life if the jar is sterilized properly
I just put them in the recycling bin.
I use them for tinctures! So many tinctures to be made...
You could use it to make kombucha
Sourdough starter!
I use old mason jars to store my whole bean coffee in the freezer until I’m ready to grind and use it.
A coffee aficionado can probably chime in on why this is bad, but uts the best use I’ve found for the jars.
Freezing is okay and helps for storage of big bags, but freezing and taking them out and putting them back in every day isn't good because of the condensation.
But even then, it's probably fine.
I don’t do that. I only thaw and grind enough for about a month’s consumption at a time. I got ~6 pounds of coffee for Christmas and only have a cup a day usually.
I was just providing my process because it seems, unintentionally, well designed to avoid condensation.
AFAIK the best thing you can do to improve your coffee-freezing process is to prevent moisture from getting into the beans when you thaw. If you let it, moisture from the air will condense on the cold beans. So keep the beans in a closed, airtight container until they come to room temperature. (Airtight because water vapor is air.) So yeah, jars are good for this. Or sealed freezer bags should work too.
Molotov cocktail?
Do you happen to have any My Little Pony figurines to put in the jar?
I use wide mouthed mason jars for Kratky hydroponics. This design (not my design) makes them into nice, decorative pots.
Spaghetti storage. What you described I'd do with an old tennis ball can. Glass jars have uses.
Might be a bit narrow, but if you wanted to make some pickle spears it should work.
I like to do a fridge pickle (always gets eaten within a few weeks, so spoilage isn't a huge concern). Something like this pickled jalapeño recipe works with most veggies, and you can use some whole black peppercorn and mustard seeds (or a pickling spice mix) to give it that pickle flavor.
I've seen at least two videos of a jar being used in the wrong way. Using these to make casts is the third because the rigid container will have to be broken to get the mold.
I recommend cleaning it and just using it to store bits and bobs or food if its food-safe. Or just recycle it. Or, make a lego submarine.