I feel like the up-cycling queen! Okay, that’s a bit cocky, but I am really proud of my latest project and I want to share all the details with you.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, there’s one thing you’ll be sick of hearing – recycling alone isn’t enough.

I often say that to improve our damaged planet we need to reduce the amount of rubbish we produce. But while this is quite easily done when it comes to what we decide to buy (like choosing loose veg at the supermarket instead of plastic-packaged), there are swaps that aren’t so easy.

Re-purposing, however, can be a good solution.

For instance, what do you do when you need a new sofa? My old one was given to me secondhand years ago by a friend. Around six months ago my partner’s brother was helping us move said sofa to our new home and told us he’d skipped better sofas than that one.

I had to accept it was time to get rid of it. While the fabric itself was still in decent condition (I’d looked after it well), when you sat down in it you felt like you were sinking in quicksand! But when I ordered my new sofa, I was keen to re-use anything I could from the old one. And that’s when I had an idea: building a pouffe using the foam from the old sofa’s cushions. While the sinky-foam might not be great for horizontally watching Netflix, it’s still firm enough to support the weight of my feet.

After a bit of thinking and searching the internet for ideas, we came up with a nice design. As it happens, my boyfriend Tom and I are both terrible at throwing things away and we still had old tyres that came off his van that we kept – just in case! Some of them had been used as plant-pots to grow potatoes, but we still had two spare (and no longer roadworthy) tyres.

So, after thoroughly scrubbing one of them, we cut a piece of scrap wood to sit on top of it and did the same with one of the foam cushions. We then used an old bedsheet to line the foam and covered it with a lovely fabric I bought online. I’m quite pleased with the result – and apart from the shop-bought cover, all the other elements would have ended up in the skip. We actually made two.

I always wanted a corner sofa, but we couldn’t quite justify spending the cash on one. However I dream of myself being able to always have my feet up, so we decided that if we had two pouffes we could both binge-watch the latest series without having to be seated. I know, first world problems – but it did save a few things ending up in landfill, so my conscience is pretty okay with it!