Pill bottle reuse

I would like to find a use for pill bottles other than storage. I've thought about using them structurally for something but can't figure out what would benefit from lots of small compartments. I'm leaning towards something growing related, maybe a hydroponic rooting factory for cuttings?

I am willing to drill, saw, melt, whatever.

Unfortunately I don't have enough for a bunker wall (yet!)

Unfortunately, I have a problem considering building with pill bottles.

I use them to hold coins.  I inherited a lot of them full of coins from my parents.

Maybe use them like Lincoln logs?  Build a doll house??

I would love to hear your thoughts on what you might use them for.

Not pills but other subscription containers. Most of mine are glass with plastic lids. I use them for seed storage, soil collection...can't bring myself to just toss, such a waste, so they just keep stacking up in the cabinet. Though I hope one of these seasons I'll run out of room for seeds.

They might be great for storing small items.

*Small nuts/bolts/screws (think eyeglass hardware)

*Spice containers?

*Powdered ingredient containers?

*Powdered ingredient container for pre-measured ingredients (just open the bottle and dump)

*Salt/Pepper shaker?

*Shaker for any ingredient

*Container for tinctures


Construction parts:

*Small legs to raise platform, object/device/etc

*Small Knob (Bottle, cap or both could work)

*Any type of spacer


Gardening supplies

*Seed starter—add potting mix, add seed and wait

*Tiny cover for seedlings to prevent cooling/freezing at night

*Hold tiny seeds (think carrots, radish, etc,)

*Seeder for tiny seeds (drill holes in lid, add seeds, turn upside down and shake)

*Fill with warm water, sit right next to small plants so as to add heat over cold night.

Miscellaneous

*Tiny Roller

*Tiny cutout tool for cookies, anything with dough.  Take off lid, turn upside down and stamp into dough.

*Base for drawing perfect circles

*Could it be filled with an aromatic mixture, add wick and let the mixture evaporate as an air freshener?  Off hand I am thinking some type of mint.

*Add a cotton ball (or activated charcoal or both), drill holes in top and bottom and use as the case for a filter

*This is just a starter, I will try to come up with more.


Eric

This is just a hypothetical, but let’s try.

It doesn’t take much bacteria by volume to really enhance garden fertility.  If one had a way to breed specific bacteria or specific collections of bacteria, maybe a pill container would be a great way to temporarily store and/or transport to the garden.

In the scenario I am thinking, maybe one finds that  really, really fertile patch of ground.  If we go out there and bury a few pounds of flour contained in the leg of an old pair of pantyhose, over a few days to a couple of weeks, bacteria and fungi can travel through the open mesh of the pantyhose container right into the flour where it will eagerly colonize in a near-perfect environment.  At the end of the designed time, we go out and uncover the pantyhose-flour, scoop up some of the inoculated flour with a pill bottle (probably a larger one, maybe two) and take that quantity off to the garden or wait a little bit (but not too long!) till the garden is ready.  

After we take the inoculated flour that was buried, we replace with an equal amount of flour, mix very gently and bury again and wait till the next batch of microbes are ready.  We should have a continuous supply!!

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:Construction parts:

*Small legs to raise platform, object/device/etc

I've done this one - used a tiny plastic bottle to give the right angle on my wooden draining board. They did fail in time though - the weight of the board and contents caused the plastic to creep over time. I've now got it propped up with a couple of empty sweetie tins....

There are quite a few nice ideas on line - mostly storage related, but I actually quite like this chandelier

source
Or maybe it isn't a chandelier, but it could be - gives a sort of 1970s vibe!

Thanks Nancy!!


A tiny light shade/Lampshade!  That’s a great idea and I was not about to pick up on that one soon.  Maybe that would be perfect for a little light or chandelier made of tiny LEDs.

Eric

My favorite use of used pill bottles is after a thorough cleaning and drying to then be used to store seed stock.

I place a clay based humidity control packet in with the seeds to try and prolong their storage and so far so good.

This is 100%theoretical:

Make a cylinder of hardware cloth.
Mark where it overlaps itself.
Unroll it.
Set out pill bottles in a rectangle pattern the same size as the exterior of the the cylinder, bottoms up.
Lay the hardware cloth over the pill bottles.
Secure each bottle to the hardware cloth with pan head self tapping screws.
Roll the hardware cloth back into a cylinder.
Use as to lampshade.

This might work with hot glue instead of a self tapping screw, or with a flexible plastic cutting board instead of hardware cloth.

You could secure the base of the pill bottles to a pallet deck board and fill them with soil.
Plant each with seed or cuttings
Let the plants establish themselves before securing the board to a wall.
Do the same thing but fill each of them with knotweed or other hollow stemmed stalks, to create bee habitat.

Secure them to the floor of metal pan with wax.
Brush wax onto the sides of the bottles and the pan.
Pour plaster or concrete around the bottles.
De-mold with a heat gun.
Use the resulting holy stepping stone as you see fit.
You could use it as a window by filling the holes with something transparent.
Use a deeper pan don't wax the bottles and leave them in place  after casting.
The bottles can be secured by means other than wax, but I like the idea that wax can secure and release.

They could be used like bottles/ jars in a bottle wall.
You can put a screw, or bolt in them through the lid or base, and cast plaster or concrete around them to form legs, handles  or pegs.

I don't take prescriptions, but I do pile up vitamin bottles, mostly plastic but a few glass, and reuse them all over. One of my favorites was when I put rebar stakes for my tomato plants that were in wind territory. To stabilize them, I wanted the rebar to all be supporting each other. I drilled rebar sized holes in vitamin bottles of a size I liked, and side holes near the bottom edge, then, because they would be visible to the street, painted them all bright blue. I ran a blue rope through the side holes, then put them top down on the rebar, got the spacing right, and tensioned it the way I wanted.  They held the rebar stable and I had no plant fall in the wind, and they looked neat, when the plants grew up through them it looked really snazzy.





I have a design I want to do that involves a bunch of blue glass vitamin bottles I accumulated when I was taking some specific things at one point, using the different sizes to pattern a line of lights that have C7 bulbs inside.

I also found out when I needed to cover some plants last year that a certain size bottle I have fits over the top of a T post and keeps it from ripping the cover cloths. The rebar tops above that got painted blue were first used also to run cover cloths over plants by running a rope between the rebar posts held by the bottles. That worked so well it expanded into the blue painted ones.

I haven't done it yet, but plan to put them on a rope, drilled top and bottom, threaded like beads, to make the rope more visible as a marker.

These also float, which makes me think interesting ideas.

I also have some that we filled with stuff to use as weights, I sewed a fold on the bottom of fabric that blew in the wind too much, and we put the filled bottles in it, holds it nicely.

If you think outside the box, they can be more than just storage  :D

My mom thought on this, and said to put them together like lincoln logs into neat looking little house and paint them for holiday decor. Or model castles!

She also thought of making a Christmas tree out of them. I think they could make neat ornaments with some thought. Light does shine through them, they could be decorated to accentuate that effect. Oooh, take a dremel to them for lacy patterns! Like this, and put lights in  them, add paint etc to further glitz them up!

Pearl Sutton wrote:I also found out when I needed to cover some plants last year that a certain size bottle I have fits over the top of a T post and keeps it from ripping the cover cloths...  :D

Or ripping up people also. I have heard of people falling on rebar and it has caused a few bad injuries. Putting the plastic bottle, or some people use used tennis balls with a hole punched in them, over the top of the rebar both makes it less likely to puncture the Human, but also more visible to the Human so they are less of a tripping hazard.

Jay Angler wrote: I have heard of people falling on rebar and it has caused a few bad injuries. Putting the plastic bottle, or some people use used tennis balls with a hole punched in them, over the top of the rebar both makes it less likely to puncture the Human, but also more visible to the Human so they are less of a tripping hazard.

That was actually why I first started it, I use a lot of rebar and T posts and some days I have balance issues and my mom often can't see the rebar in the thick of the plants. Then I started stringing them together so the birds had places to stalk bugs (that was a major win, the birds love it!) Later I did more for the cover cloths.

Molly Conomy wrote:I'm leaning towards something growing related, maybe a hydroponic rooting factory for cuttings?

I had some foam rafts left over from a previous experiment that failed. (Evidence suggests a cat walked on the raft to snag some of my fish. Not recommended for outdoors without some sort of barrier.) I don't have any net cups and it wasn't convenient to get any. The existing holes were too big to just drop cuttings into. Turns out a certain size of pill bottle cap fit perfectly. I drilled 'em, but smaller than the raft holes, so they're like grommets or shims. I like it so far, but it needs a little movement/ filtration. And a nutrient source, whether hydroponic style or from a fish tank.

My husband sends his prescription bottles to this address to be reused.

The guidelines he has...
"Rx and over the counter bottles, large and small with or without child caps.
Must have lids, wash in hot soapy water, rinse and dry...put in ziplocks marked 'clean bottles'

Send to:
Matthew 25:Ministries
11060 Kenwood Road
Cincinnati Ohio
45242

He stores them after cleaning and just sends them once a year or so.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_25:_Ministries

"Matthew 25: Ministries' primary distribution program is "Caring For a Needy World With the Things We Throw Away." Through this program, Matthew 25 distributes clothing, medical supplies, personal care items, school supplies, food and beverages, household supplies, cleaning products, reblended paint and micro-enterprise supplies.[6] In addition to providing ongoing humanitarian aid, Matthew 25: Ministries has developed a number of programs designed to meet specific needs throughout the US and worldwide."

Judith Browning wrote:My husband sends his prescription bottles to this address to be reused.

Gonna bookmark this. A mission our church supports used to take these, but I guess they finally got enough.

T Melville wrote:

Judith Browning wrote:My husband sends his prescription bottles to this address to be reused.

Gonna bookmark this. A mission our church supports used to take these, but I guess they finally got enough.

T., I added a link to an article about them in my post above.
It involves shipping but a pretty good recycling effort all in all.

I live in Cincinnati and I have done this before, but it is a non-trivial task!

Judith Browning wrote:The guidelines he has...
"Rx and over the counter bottles, large and small with or without child caps.
Must have lids, wash in hot soapy water, rinse and dry...put in ziplocks marked 'clean bottles'

This is great. Just wondering if anyone knows what the charity does with them afterwards?

They are reasonably airtight, but I haven't tested if they are watertight. Could they be used as floats somehow? Rafts for ducks/geese in a pond?

I mean, if you stuffed the Titanic full of these she might just meander up to the surface. Well, maybe.

Since film canisters are a thing of the past (mostly)  I use pill containers as a replacement to add weights to pesky warp threads that go slack - anything will do to make the weight correct - coins, washers, screws - as long as the item fits. Then I can get on with the business of weaving
I love the propagating idea, And commendations to those above who provided long lists of suggestions!

Juniper Zen wrote:

Judith Browning wrote:The guidelines he has...
"Rx and over the counter bottles, large and small with or without child caps.
Must have lids, wash in hot soapy water, rinse and dry...put in ziplocks marked 'clean bottles'

This is great. Just wondering if anyone knows what the charity does with them afterwards?

I can't say for sure but have always assumed they were used to distribute bulk items to developing countries such as vitamins and other supplements, possibly including medications?

T Melville wrote:

Molly Conomy wrote:I'm leaning towards something growing related, maybe a hydroponic rooting factory for cuttings?

I had some foam rafts left over from a previous experiment that failed. (Evidence suggests a cat walked on the raft to snag some of my fish. Not recommended for outdoors without some sort of barrier.) I don't have any net cups and it wasn't convenient to get any. The existing holes were too big to just drop cuttings into. Turns out a certain size of pill bottle cap fit perfectly. I drilled 'em, but smaller than the raft holes, so they're like grommets or shims. I like it so far, but it needs a little movement/ filtration. And a nutrient source, whether hydroponic style or from a fish tank.

I absolutely love this! could always just manually scoop up some water and pour it back in several times a day, possibly. I've had some luck with cuttings in stagnant water so I'm inclined to think even though not great that would improve oxygen somewhat maybe?

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:They are reasonably airtight, but I haven't tested if they are watertight. Could they be used as floats somehow? Rafts for ducks/geese in a pond?

I mean, if you stuffed the Titanic full of these she might just meander up to the surface. Well, maybe.

The ones I have had are not airtight - I know because I spilled some what in my purse and ruined an entire bottle of a prescription!

Here's a newer picture. Some stuff worked well, some stuff didn't. The jade plant leaves are gone. They just melted down. I took 'em out just before they lost integrity. Maybe they don't like so much water? Maybe I should've left 'em out a few days to callous before sticking them in water? The elephant garlic that had roots are loving it, they're growing tops. (As are the root ends from some green onions.) The littlest one with just it's base plate and no root, the skin started getting slimy, so I pulled it out. It dried back down and feels firm, so I might try again. Of course pothos, sweet potato and wandering jew love it. A little more surprising to me, the aloe and [either spider plant or airplane plant] are responding well.



Here's a look at the roots.

I wouldn't use pill bottles for tinctures or other liquids--too easy to spill the liquid.