Garden Paving Stone Upcycled From Shampoo and Milk Bottles
Lately I have been a little obsessed with melting HDPE plastic. You know all those bottles that have a number 2 recycling logo. Some folks have made some pretty interesting projects from the stuff. Since it is so sturdy and hard it can be cut and carved like wood.
But I was looking for a simpler project, one that wouldn’t take a lot of cutting and sanding. I also don’t have a wooden form to compress the plastic in so I had to improvise.
For my first experiment I used a green shampoo bottle, a blue milk bottle cap and a tuna can.
I melted the cut up pieces of the bottle right in the can in the oven at 350 F and then put the lid back in the can and pressed the can into the plastic using some clamps.
When it had cooled it looked like this.
And I couldn’t get it out of the can without cutting up the can.
So I had this sort of interesting plastic thing that was totally useless.
But it gave me an idea.
Happy Upcycling,
Very cool! I’m wondering whether there are fumes produced when you heat the plastic, and if so, did you have to do anything to avoid those? And how hot did it get? (I assume “hot” because of the use of the hot pads.) What a great way to make something useful and pretty from something that would usually be just thrown in the recycling. It’s kind of daunting that it takes so much to make a solid object but I guess that makes sense.