At 1 Million Women we take waste seriously and try our best to reuse anything we can but I must admit I never gave a second thought to throwing away my eggshells until I saw this post from The Prairie Homestead.
As it turns out, eggshells are not rubbish - they're actually useful for a lot of things!
Here are nine ways you can use your eggshells around the house and garden:
- If you have hens you can feed them crushed eggshells as an all-natural calcium supplement. Apparently they quite enjoy them!
- The membrane within eggshells has been shown to have healing properties when applied to grazes or cuts as a bandage.
- If snails and slugs are pests in your garden crushed eggshells are a great chemical-free way to deter them because they simply don't like the feeling of the sharp pieces of shell.
- You can actually make an eggshell powder which is safe to ingest as a potent, and cheap, calcium supplement. To do this you'll need free range, preferably also organic, eggs and you'll have to dry the eggshells out in the oven and sanitise them before crushing them.
- Let your seedlings sprout in rinsed out egg shells - they make pretty and environmentally friendly little pots. A carton full of sprouting eggshells on the windowsill is a great way to start a dozen seedlings.
- Eggshells are great in a compost pile because they decompose quickly and are full of minerals and nutrients.
- You can use eggshells as a non-toxic abrasive in washing up by throwing some crushed eggshells into any pan or baking dish that has food cooked onto it as you scrub. They do a great job of breaking up the food. (Don't do this with anything that has a non-stick coating.)
- Keep eggshells in the bottom of the container you use to water your plants. Lots of plants don't thrive because they lack calcium or other minerals and eggshells are full of these minerals.
- The egg-carton has always been a preschool favourite for kids craft but kids can have a lot of fun with eggshells too! From painting festive easter designs on empty eggshells to making little egg men to using crushed egg shell for mosaics - there are lots of crafty possibilities.
