As a team put our heads together and come up with a viable use for Bottle caps for The TerraCycle Bottle Cap Contest

for some sources about creativity and brainstorming… this article was one of the first things I came across. While it is brief and simple I think it has some very good thoughts. I especially like the part where it talks about your subconscious wanting resolution or closure. “When faced with an incomplete picture it will work to complete the picture.” Can it work for this? I don’t know, I would suspect yes. I ask myself and also you all… what would it feel like or be like if through this humble little group of folks we came up with a solution or use for these caps that would forever stop them going to the landfill and ideally be useful in some manner that would benefit all of us? Is this thinking a little over the top? After al its just bottle caps? Perhaps, but I think as when I started this goal it would be sooooo cool to solve this problem! The contest part of it was just what got me thinking about it!
So I will, and encourage you all to as well, perhaps use the article as a way to begin to try and draw the mental picture with what we have so far:
IE they are not recyleable (at least recyclers will not take them where I live and most other parts of world as well) they are thrown away and the plastic will not break down for a very long time to come and even longer when buried under the ground where no oxygen is allowed to get to them. etc… (as it says clearly define the problem. Then go from there.

http://www.creativityforlife.com/full_article.php?article_id=104

in our basement. They of course moved the furniture and when they placed it back on the moist carpet they put these strafoam blocks under the legs. Why could you not use the plasstic bottle caps for this? Most carpeting these days is not that deep of a pile and would support the furniture plenty hi above the carpet… this could possibly save a carpet cleaning company a few bucks on purchasing the foam blocks and they could be reused again and again. If I had thought of this I would have just had them use mine and keep there foam.
Anyway its a thought!

http://tinyurl.com/34mmvl

http://villiku-littlething.blogspot.com/2007/06/bottle-cap-pincushion.html

second picture

This is my first submission for the Terracycle bottle cap contest. My idea originally was for bees wax. I am a woodworker as one of my hobbies and occasionally will use bees wax to lubricate screws before screwing them into the wood. This helps more than one might think. With this in mind my thought was the bees wax could be packaged in the caps.This amount of wax for this purpose would be about right for most woodworkers and would be less expensive in this size so less waste would occur. Also if you lost this amount of wax you would not be out so much money. I, in thinking further about this thought why should it be limited to just this product. A company such as Burts bees who among many products sells a lip ointment in a metal two part container or the company that makes Carmex which is in a small jar. A “refill” could be sold for a little bit less expensive in the bottle cap and the contents be put into the original container to carry with you. Then this bottle cap turned in with others people would be collecting to reuse for this purpose.
Further why not other products packaged in the caps? Products such as foot powder, tooth paste, one days worth of vitamins,salt and pepper, and I am sure many more things could be applied to this. This small quantity could be considered a travel size or one use amount.
I really think this could be a viable use for these bottle caps. The one way I could see to enclose the caps is with a foil “lid” if you will or foil enclosure. Similar to what you see on a leading brand of Yogurt. This would be best done with the automated machinery that would glue the foil over the top to seal it properly. I could also see the possibility of two caps with a tape type seal around them to hold them together for twice the amount of space or quantity. Maybe even come up with a way to have a “cap” for the cap as it were. I am not sure how that would be done but that would be excellent as well.
I used regular parafin wax to illustrate this and made my own aluminum foil enclosure.

I’ve had my little brain stewing on this for a couple of weeks now and I’ve come up with practically nothing. Lol! Aside from using the bottle caps as checker pieces, I’m pretty much drawing a blank. But inspiration may still hit me so I’ll leave this open for now. : )

I don’t have any ideas at the moment what to do with the hundreds of bottle caps I have collected in the last six months. Just seemed a shame to throw them in the trash. I did have the idea of using them in concrete sculptures but have yet to put that idea to any use.
It seems a little crazy to me that the bottles are recyclable and caps are not. Who thought up that brilliant idea???
I will keep thinking on this one and get back to you all soon with something.

Here is an entry that someone made a video on. The link will take you to it on the terracycle site. This entry is a good one! Maybe this will stimulate some thoughts of our own!
I am still working on a couple of my own ideas and will enter those real soon!

http://terracycle.blogspot.com/2007/11/bottle-cap-contest-entry.html

Happy new year everyone!

You can email this gentleman Brian Young” brian@terracycle.net and he can take your entries. This way you can send attachments or whatever as well.
I saw on the terracycle website a link to a video of an entry. He had made a fishing bobber out of two of the caps. Worked great! Thought that was very creative.
I have a couple ideas and will very soon submit them and share it with you all. I hoped that the sharing of our ideas together would help in the creative process. Brainstorming works kindof that way. My idea may spur your thoughts to come up with somthing even better. Well heres to you all for Doing this.

Merry Christmas!