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

I had this van that had a smashed in tailgate. Over the last 4 months, the rainy warm weather soaked into the carpet of the interior of the dead van. The box of bottle caps that I had saved with the intention of invention, fell apart. A friend called the car salvaging company and they took the van away, with a big pile of bottle caps “hidden” cleverly behind the back seat. So I’m hoping that when they smash and melt the car chassie, caps will be melted as well. Whatdaya think?

Explanation of bottle cap recycling.

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=92510162&m=92510137

Earth911.org

Part of the joy of being Mr Congestion the last several days is that my sleep/wake cycles are about as regular as Michael Moore. (think about it, he’s overweight, eats poorly … wait for it … irregular …. and yes you giggled) Now back from that moment of sophomoric humor …

I was watching planet green the other day in which rooftop gardens were the topic. The growing medium for roofs was made of a combo of clay pellets and compost. Apparently the clay was lower in weight than soil, and since it was a natural product it was considered “green” and can be returned to the earth easily.

I wonder if semi-ground, more like shredded, bottle caps would make a worthwhile lightweight medium that could be a part of rooftop gardens?

Coke was sponsoring the beach cleanup today so I told several people about my idea for a kid friendly cap sorting station with a hand grinder. Maybe someone will absorb it and make it happen.

I feel like I have done all I can for this over the past month. Having this goal really made me look into the issue. I added a few ideas and after doing some research found out I can recycle certain plastic caps in my ‘hood (and have been doing so ever since).

Since the rest of what I do with the caps on a practical level is up to me, I’m sticking to my ideas to re-use the caps I can’t recycle.

Thanks all!

and found several labeled with the numbers 2 and 4. Knowing that my area recycles those, I put them in my recycling bin. I have several more, though, that I will find use for, since they aren’t numbered and I don’t know if they can be recycled here.

while cleaning, and I thought about it again. I looked it up and found out that in my area, I can recycle plastic caps as long as they are numbered 1-7. i also found an NPR interview online that explained why it’s so hard to recyce them, and that some areas do and some don’t; those that do only do it for certain numbers (pertaining to the type of plastic).

I looked through all my caps for numbers, but they are not numbered, so I am trying to figure out how i can know which are recyclable in my area.

Otherwise, I saw a great idea today: someone was building a house and used the colored caps in the cement as a mosaic—it looked great!

I have been engaging in a lot of creative projects lately, so I am going to use some of the larger caps for paint wells. I will also give them to my local craft studio for use and send others to pre-schools for their craft projects.

Saw a story online today that explains why they make us take the caps off the bottles. It seems like the issues is safety for the workers at the recycling centers. But they are recycleable.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=recycling-plastic-bottle-caps&sc=DD_20080828

Here we go! http://www.artgrange.com/LittleBottlecap.html If these are coolenough, at least a few bottle caps could end up in art projects that stay for years as fridge art. My friend was telling me that she has a construction paper teddy bear that her 32 year old daughter did in Kindergarden still hanging in her kitchen.

Good ideas in this article about recycling stuff. I didn’t realize so many places were set up already. Now if we can figure out CFL’s in Hawaii. http://www.emagazine.com//view/?3172