# Next Box Ideas



## paddycat (Mar 25, 2015)

Hi everyone, I'm looking for cheap recycleable ideas for nest boxes like cardboard etc...

I was making coffee one morning and finished a small 1 pint plastic bottle of milk. 
I did some research and apparently they are made out of this material...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-density_polyethylene








I could easily snip off the handle and widen the hole, making this a 49 pence nest box.

Is this Toxic / and or / Dangerous for moosles?

Cause if it's quite safe I can use these disposable ones.

-Paddy


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## Cereal Killer (Nov 23, 2014)

Plastic in general is not such a good idea because it contains impurities from manufacturing which may release in considerable amounts if chewed or exposed to acids or solvents (e.g. stomach acid and water). As far as I know especially HDPE has variants which can contain more of the famous bisphenol A than just PET. Although there are other types of plastic (type 7) which contain much more of it. You should (in theory) not really find this substance in food packaging or kitchen items. But since the bisphenol A hype started it has been found in quite a number of drinking bottles, water cookers, etc. in considerable concentrations regardless, depending not only on the type of plastic used, but also on where and how the plastic was manufactured. Fatty foods such as milk will absorb more bisphenol A than just water. In my country, milk is only sold in tetrapacks, which contain an additional insolating layer from the plastics. Water dispensers for rodents also contain plastic parts which can contain bisphenol A. There even have been scientific papers to account for this in animal experiments, since mice may chew on the parts and the substance may leak into the water, thus can inconsistently influence the study results.

It is not really a huge concern, considering that we are just talking about animals and not humans. Almost all commonly used plastics are biologically inert, meaning that they are very environmentally friendly because they don't degrade or absorb into biological tissue where they could disturb metabolic functions. The plasticizers they contain only are marginally important in terms of direct constant exposure. If you really want edible plastics, you could use bio-degradable plastics such as polycaprolactone, which are also used in medicine. But again the stuff you find on ebay may or may not contain impurities. The only way to make sure that plastic is healthy is to buy pharmaceutical grade plastics designed for consumption. Those are very expensive and hard to source.

So in short, any plastic used for human food in the first place is probably quite safe, but not perfectly healthy to digest. If the mice don't chew on it, then it is fine. I avoid exposing my mice to plastic, but use it for food and for water regardless. A tiny bit of chewing is not so bad.


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