Creative Challenge #5: Plastic Bottles

Make something with Plastic Bottles

In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to raise a little awareness toward the enormous amounts of plastic bottles used around the world, coupled with some thoughts on recycling and upcycling those bottles into creative products. My family is hooked on bubbly water, and while the number of bottles we go through each week is staggering, each of these bottles gets recycled…and occasionally upcycled into art (our Recycled Sculpture project can be found here).

Sobering Statistics

• Two million plastic bottles are used in the U.S. every five minutes!
• Almost every hour nearly 250,000 plastic bottles are dumped
• The average time taken by plastic bottles to decompose in a landfill is close to 700 years.
• Producing new plastic products from recycled materials uses two-thirds less energy than is required to make products from raw (virgin) materials. It also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The Challenge

Make something with plastic bottles! Have you cut the tops off to use them as funnels, added them to a marble run, used them as sand scoopers, or turned them into something surprising? The project should be executed by children, but adults are welcome to facilitate or collaborate if the mood strikes!

To join in

• Use plastic bottles, along with any other materials of your choice.
• Attach a link to your blog post, a YouTube video, or photo of the experiment along with a description of what you and/or your child/ren did in the comment section below.
• There is no deadline for this project.

Inspiration

• I’m in love with these beaded bottle curtains from the Seoul Olympics!
• Cut bottles up and turn them into flowers like these Garbage Flowers from Aunt Peaches or these Sun Catchers from The Chocolate Muffin Tree.
• Save a bunch of bottles and make an orb or hanging lamp like these by Ilona Staples

Instructions for adding an image file

• Click on the “Choose File” button (below the “Submit” button)
• Choose a JPEG file from your computer
• Type in a description of your experiment into the comment text box
• Click the “Submit Comment” button
• Grab the Creative Challenge button and add it to your site, or copy this text into your HTML.



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For more Creative Challenges, click here.

How are you celebrating Earth Day?