Dog toy made from plastic bags

14 July 2016 – by Tavi Johnno

what to do with all that plastic? this is a question I keep asking myself.

over the last few weeks I have been researching and coming up with ideas to make new cheap products, like maybe collect a lot of bottles and build housing for the homeless, make funky stools by grinding up and  melting down milk bottles (hdpe) to have a colour specked stools, with legs of alluminum from alluminum cans that have been smelted in a home made foundry.

I like those ideas and would like to explore them. but it wasnt until I actually melted a few things down that I came across other uses. Plastic bags for instatance. they can be melted and reshaped at 250 degrees celsius. I made a small chair out of a big collection of bags. one of the legs came of and I gave it to my dog to play with. He loved it as a chew toy as it was reasonably hard and also could fit in his mouth to chew on easily as he is a small dog.

okay so I have made something new relativly easily out of something that would otherwise go to land fill. but two questions that still need to be answered is it safe for my dog? and after he is done with it how would it then be disposed?

I have searched many dog toys and the plastic ones are made from hdpe. And  plastic bags (ldpe), so are PE also. so i’ll contiune to observe how the dog interacts with the toy.

now once it is done where to I throw it way to? in victoria, australia there is a recycling collection bins outside many chain supermarkets called Redcycle bins. and they are collected and then made into outdoor objects such as park benches and board walks. so that is one option and since it is in a smaller shape it wont take up as much room in the collection bins as a bundle of bags would have.  what I wanted to know was can it go in the recycle bin now that it is in a different form, why/why not?

Planetark says that as in bag form they get stuck in machines, but as a solid object this wont happen. so now something that that could not go in the recycle bin, can now as it is in a ridgid form. 🙂

 

recycling sources:

http://recyclingweek.planetark.org/recycling-info/plasticbags.cfm

http://www.zerowaste.sa.gov.au/at-home/recycle-right/what-do-the-numbers-and-symbols-on-plastics-mean