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e

Materials

The Most Creative Recycling We've Seen Yet: Turn Plastic Bottles into String

By Rain Noe - June 24, 2014

This is nuts. An inventive Russian YouTuber has figured out how to turn plastic bottles into string, using purely mechanical means. After "unraveling" a single bottle he's left with what appear to be several yards' worth of filament, which he then uses to bind things together. Hitting the resultant plastic twine with a heat gun causes it to partially melt and shrink, more or less fusing it into place.

He's used the resultant string to lash logs together to build a primitive structure, and to bind logs together so that he can bore through several of them at once. And he's also created some nifty tool handle wraps. What I'm hoping will happen next is that others in less developed areas will watch his tutorial on how to build the tool, duplicate it, and come up with their own uses for the string. The electricity required to run a heat gun may not be available in these areas, but at the very least, they could probably come up with some creative uses for the unmelted string.

Materials

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

7 Comments

Kevin

4 years ago

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How could people who lack electricity to operate a heat gun watch the video illustrating how to make the 'string'? If they had the technology to watch the video, why would they need home made plastic string?
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James

4 years ago

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Lots of cool stuff in that video. I was amazed that they got that huge drill to work in a benchtop drill press. Also in the absence of a heat gun just use fire.
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Hackett

5 years ago

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Apropos of your recent Mongolian archery posts, this video seems to have a stay-tuned feature at the end where it looks as if he's invented a better method for aiming arrows. He seems to draw and release the string from below the fletching, allowing for complete line-of-sight along the arrow shaft.
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k

5 years ago

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I was thinking the same thing, looks like a potential new source for 3d printer filament?!?!?! found some internet links claiming PET is the new go to material over PLA for printer filament, I wonder how consistently you could get the width to cut? 3rd world countries could probably heat seal this stuff by waving it over their cooking fire a few times....
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Tom Mc

5 years ago

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PET cannot be used in 3D printers because of it's crystallization properties. That's also why you don't see this polyester used in injection molding (except in preforms for plastic soda bottles which are then molded with SBM (stretch blow molding).

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shoes

5 years ago

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I know the length of this stuff isnt that long but could this be used as 3d printing filament I mean the thickness would be very consistent although the width is probably quite variable. dont know if PET can be 3d printed and I'm guessing the shrink factor wouldn't work but fascinating material all the same
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Sebastian De La Maza

5 years ago

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This itÂ´s not new, please google Alejandro Sarmiento, an argentine designer who has been working with this technic long time ago.
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