Recycling and Upcycling

I'm extremely enthusiastic about recycling things. Or, perhaps a better term is "upcycling": creating new useful things out of materials that many people would just toss away. A particularly good source are plastic bottles. I especially like empty detergent bottles, since they come in all shapes and sizes and can be turned into just about anything from organizers to toys.

On the first photo, you can see how easy it is to make a unique bucket and spade for the sandbox or the beach. Just cut off the top part of a big detergent bottle  and you're done! However, I've decided to use the "bucket" as a carrier for all sorts of supplies for the summer activities with the neighbour's grandchildren (it's big enough to stuff anything from paper to balloons, old CDs, marbles, and a bunch of other things in there for the kids to play and create with), so I used some ducktape to line all the edges. I'll give the spade to the children to play with in the sandbox.

The best about these things is that they are practically indestructible! And even when they do get destroyed you can always make more from all those  bottles that would otherwise get thrown away!
In the middle I've left a little pile of shavings and cuts - this is all that got thrown away in the end. Ecological or what? :-)

The second photo shows another recycling project that you can throw together in a matter of minutes: a stationery carrier to organize all the pens, pencils, scissors, staplers and other things that would otherwise lie around on the table.

I simply used 5 empty detergent bottles cut in half and taped them together with a bit of ducktape. Now, you could use paint to colour each bottle and then use hot glue to glue the colourful bottles together - this would make a very pretty table organizer. However, I've made this with the sole purpose of stuffing it with stationery supplies and take it outside into the garden to make and build new things with the neigbour's grandchildren. This organizer will get tossed around all summer long, so making it extremely pretty was not my priority. I just wanted to make it as simple and as durable as possible and the combination of plastic bottles and ducktape does the job perfectly!