As a small indie business we are conscious of the waste involved in running our lab, and know it's our responsibility to minimise our impact where possible. One of the ways we can do our bit and offset this is to try recycle byproducts of film processing rather than just chucking them away.
When your film arrives with us it's usually in the plastic pot/container, and all those containers definitely don't want to be thrown straight in the bin.
Luckily these containers are very useful to us in the lab to store customers films in after developing and before scanning. But the volume of films we process (thank you!) means we do have excess, and with us finding them so useful here at the studio, we thought others out there might find them useful too.
These pots are perfect for storing small bits and bobs like buttons, paint, coins, screws, matches, seeds and any other legal stuff in there safe and sound. If they sound like they might come in handy for you, you can get a box of them here.
Another byproduct from the process is the metal film canisters which the film is extracted from. We've created a bunch of things from these ourselves including keyrings (pick your favourite film type!), to mini planters (we give these away for free in our lab sometimes), but one of the best uses for these empty canisters is to reload them back up with film! You can get a box of empty film canisters here.
Now it would be just plain cheeky to profit from selling you our waste, so we thought a perfect thing to do with the sales of these would be to give all takings to charity. We've chosen local charity MAP which is an alternative education provider working with young people who are unable to access the mainstream school system.
Were also welcome to hear from anyone who has any ideas for things they could do with these unlimited byproducts!