That Crazy Recycling Lady in the Neighborhood

What a weirdo. Oh wait, she's me.

I confess, I raid people's recyling bins.

In particular, I have a neighbor who puts interesting and useful things in her recycling and puts it out a day ahead of time, too, to give me a fighting chance of salvaging stuff. For example, she puts a nice sturdy empty gallon jug that once contained cranberry juice in her recycling about every second week or so. Rinsed out. And with the lid. I do our emergency water storage in gallon jugs, mostly, in the basement, so I can certainly make use of that. Then sometimes it's a stack of the plastic trays and covers from TV dinners, the kind with 3 sections for the different parts of the meal. Those are great for packing up leftovers to eat for lunch another day. And today she had a cranberry juice jug AND a big plastic bucket that once contained kitty litter. The big square kind of bucket with the hinged flip-top lid and wire bale handle. Very sturdy. The plastic itself is food safe, but since it has held perfumed cat litter, I would not put food directly in it without a barrier, but in Mylar packaging? In good quality manufacturer packaging? Vacuum packed? You betcha. Very handy and great for stacking on a shelf.

Now I'm looking for a suggestion: We get our cat litter from ALDI. It comes in a heavy white plastic container with a self handle.  It's a lot of plastic. The lids are not airtight. These jugs would be great for storing liquids or maybe grains if they were airtight, and of course if they were perfectly clean and had no hint of kitty litter perfume left. But the non airtightness is the deal breaker. And so I'm recycling a lot of heavy white plastic. I hate doing that. I'd much rather find a reuse for them. Does anyone have any ideas?