Turning Plastic Bottles Into Piggy Banks

Recycling. It's a great thing. More and more states are firming up their recycling policies, making it even easier for consumers to recycle as much of their waste as possible. To make things even better, designers are coming up with ways to take used products and recycling them into a new product.

Take Taylor McKenzie-Veal, a fellow Rhode Island-based designer. Taylor takes a commonly recycled piece of plastic, the sode bottle, and turns it into a piggy bank. "By reiterating the original, high-tech manufacturing process of blow molding in a low-tech manner using basic tools and components, the empty bottle is converted into a vessel of value. In just minutes a small oven, an air compressor and a plywood mold are used to re-blow mold an empty bottle into a newly functional item." 

Not only is this a great example of what good design can do, it's an even better example of how designers need to be thinking in the near future. Products should be designed with the inevitable fate of being recycled, and hopefully turned into something functional.