Recycling Plastic Bottles: Toy Cars

Plastic bottles are an endless source of fun and play. A little imagination and an old detergent bottle becomes a toy car!

Here's how to make one:

1) Make four holes into the bottle - 2 in the front and 2 in the back. Just make sure that the holes are low enough on the bottle, so that the bottle will actually stand on wheels and not on its flat side.

2) Insert drinking straws through the holes. Make sure that a little bit of straw sticks out of each hole - this will act as a spacer so that the wheels won't touch the bottle and get stuck. While this step is not absolutely necessary, I do find it that the wheels spin more smoothly and more quickly if  the straw is in place.

3) Add the wheels. Use any kind of bottle caps or jar lids you want. Just make sure that you punch the hole precisely in the middle of each lid. Then, get two wooden skewers - these will be the car's axles. Take one skewer, put one wheel on one end of the skewer, push the skewer through the straw and put the second wheel on the other end of the skewer. Do this for both sets of wheels.

4) Enjoy playing with your new car :-)

A tip for the making:
While the holes can be make by hand, I usually use an electric drill to make all the holes in the bottle and the jar lids. I use Number 5 drill for the holes in the bottle and Number 3 drill for the holes in the lids.

These cars go extremely fast and cover very long distances. The best thing about them is that even if they get broken, you can always make more - just get the parts from your recycle bin :-)