1. Shoes: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe Program will turn old athletic shoes into new playgrounds and basketball courts. They do also point out that if the shoes still have some life left in them, then donating them so somebody can use them as shoes is probably a better idea.

2. Glasses: Not the kind you drink out of (although those can also be recycled), but the kind you wear to improve your vision, or just to look cool (sunglasses). Make GREEN Come True gives a couple of places where you can donate old glasses so that they can be reused (so, technically, this is not recycling, but we’ll let them off since it is better).

3. Batteries: This one shouldn’t have been a surprise really by now. At the very least, I hope most people now know not to throw them into the landfill (via their household waste). Many places now take used batteries back for recycling.

I have three more surprising things that can be recycled:

4. Carpet: There are a few places that will take post-consumer carpet (i.e. the stuff you rip up when you’re upgrading to that new plush shag) and recycle it. Most often, into the padding that you’ll be putting under that new carpet you’re fitting. Check out the folks at CARE for more information about carpet recovery.

5. Mattresses and box springs: While many of the places that sell mattresses here will take away your old one, you can make sure that they are recycled if you take them to places like the DR3 Mattress Recycling facility.

6. Denim: When your jeans are finished with, they can be pulled apart and turned into insulation for your loft.

While I was out the other day I came across a couple of solutions for charging portable devices, like iPods & media players, iPhones and other mobile phones, GPS navigation units or portable gaming devices using the energy of the sun. The two models I saw in the store were the Solio Universal Hybrid Solar Charger and the Solio H1000 Hybrid Battery Charger.

Of the two, the H1000 was perhaps the most appealing to me, simply because I’m not such a big fan of the fan out operation on the other model. Both have an internal battery that is charged by the solar panel, and can then be used to charge your external device. That means you can leave the charger in a sunny place all day, and then top up your phone from it overnight. And using solar power instead of leaving the phone’s AC charger plugged in all day, reduces the phantom power drain too (unplugging that AC adapter when you’re not using will help there too).