There are billions of credit cards in the world, but what happens to them once they’ve passed their expiry date? The vast majority are made out of PVC and can’t be recycled, so they either go to landfill or they have to be destroyed somehow. And to us, that just seems to be a bit of a waste.

Luckily, there are people all over the world who have come up with any number of imaginative solutions to this question and shared the results on the internet. Here are a few of our favourites:

– One musician decided they didn’t want to pay out for guitar picks, so they cut a load of old credit cards to shape. Not only do they do the job well, but they also look great!

– The same sort of idea struck an artist, who cut hundreds of old credit cards into small pieces and re-arranged them in a mosaic. With a decent selection of colours, you can illustrate just about anything.

– One brilliant idea is to cut out the part of the card with your name, and glue it to your possessions. You can personalise just about anything, and turns a standard iPod into a talking point. And a decent dab of strong glue makes your gear theft-proof too.

– We’ve been on a few first aid courses in our time. And one thing that was rammed home to us (rather too repeatedly for our liking) by our instructor, was the benefits of a credit card in the treating of injuries. Tape one over a puncture wound, we were told, and it keeps it air tight. We then made our excuses and left.

Then there’s the plain silly. Our travels took us to a scavenging blog, and their great minds came up with these:

Monopoly money with real gold credit cards, and:

Blades for a toy helicopter. Which means, of course, with old credit cards, the sky’s the limit!