Don’t Plastic Bottle Caps Go in the Recycling?

This little Real Simple, “New Uses for Old Vices” tidbit, ostensibly for giving up filling landfills is somewhat helpful:

“Reuse/repurpose/recycle those plastic bottle caps as contact lens keepers. Pour saline solution into two clean caps and store them overnight in a safe place where they won’t be overturned.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those caps recyclable? Shouldn’t they be? And while we don’t like to put this all on one personality type, we can easily label this solution as a Classic Structure or Fun Structure organization faux pas — making a temporary solution into a permanent one.

Yes, Classic Structures and Fun Structures are the penultimate jerry-riggers. They always have ingenious temporary fixes to any mechanical problem. Are these solutions aesthetically pleasing, or elegant in any way? Nope. But it gets the job done and works in a pinch until — and the until is often the problem with these types — one is able to buy or create a more permanent solution.

But I guess one of the problems of coming up with 8 new uses for old vices is that it’s a flawed proposition to begin with. And frankly if this idea was billed as a temporary or last minute idea — what do you do when you’ve forgotten your contact lens case and it’s two o’clock in the morning — then yeah, those bottle caps are the perfect solution and I’ve seen my husband do it many a time on the road. And hey, maybe if they’d billed those beer can noisemakers as an impromptu idea for keeping the kids busy, I wouldn’t have worried so much about Real Simple‘s editors’ drinking habits!

But please, whatever you do, after you’ve put your contacts back in the next day, please go out and purchase a new contact lens case, and also know that a small shot glass — maybe you’ve given up doing shots for the new year — or even a big water glass also works in a pinch too.