Loo Rolls Make Me a Twisted Firestarter

Cardboard tubes (from loo rolls) Firelighters

I am sure that one thing you can collect quite easily are loo roll cardboard tubes. Surely, you will be throwing these away virtually every day…well, don’t!

These cardboard tubes can be made into some really useful firelighters to use with your rocket stove (see a previous post under Electronics and Power about Prepping for Power Outages), your wood-burner or outside camp fire.

So let’s start. Start collecting the materials over time as they are things you would have thrown away.

You will need:

• Cardboard tubes
• Old candles/tealights…you know, the ones where the wick is no good anymore, broken into small pieces
• Fluff from a dryer machine (if you have one)
• Scraps of paper, newspaper, used envelopes, shredded
• Bits of fabric like old J-cloths, shredded
• Tissue paper (often found as packaging material from online shopping or wrapped around presents)

To assemble the firelighter:

Leaving the tissue paper to one side for later, fill the tube with an assortment of the items above, evenly distributing each type so that they are mixed.

Wrap the tissue paper around the tube, screwing the paper at each end to form a tail (the tails are what you will light when you put the firelighter into the fireplace). And there you have it, a simple firelighter. The photos will help you to see what the end product looks like.

For a further recycling idea, cut the top off an old large plastic bottle and use this to store your firelights. This way they will keep nice and dry, ready for use.