Last November, I wrote about a laptop sleeve I had received from act2 - GreenSmart that was made out of 6 recycled 16oz plastic bottles, which I thought was pretty cool:

A few weeks ago the people from act2 - GreenSmart were kind enough to send me one of their new products, a vertical messenger bag made from 23 plastic bottles. Now my recycled bottle laptop sleeve has a place to call home!

Here is the bag in it’s natural habitat - my front yard. It’s a vertical messenger bag so your laptop goes in sideways, making the bag a little bit easier to carry as there is less of hit hitting my back as I walk or ride my bike to the local coffee joint.

Inside there is plenty of room for my laptop, a few books, sunglasses, my iPhone, and pretty much anything else I want to carry with me. The laptop pocket is padded to give even more protection for your computer. There are a bunch of pockets on the front that get covered once you close the big flap.

On the back there is yet another zippered pocket for storing more stuff, but there is so much room inside that I have not needed to use it yet. Overall, the bag seems incredibly strong for being made out of recycled plastic and it weighs barely anything - which is great compared to some messenger bags I have had in the past. So how do they take plastic bottles and turn them into bags and laptop sleeves? Funny you should ask…

Bottles are hand sorted by the collector to remove non-PET and other visual impurities. The greater the separation process, the more value the resulting material has since the refinement process will require fewer steps. After sorting bottles are compacted into bales for efficient transport to processing plants. One bale is over 6000 bottles, enough to process into 350 yards of finished fabric.

Bales are ground into a rough material called PET flakes to be prepared for conversion to a raw material source. After washing, the highest quality ground flakes are chemically separated from impurities and converted to PET chips through a process known as de-polymerizing and re-polymerizing. Once complete, the resulting fibers can be woven into yarns. PET fibers are separated by size and fed into yarn twisting machinery. Each yard of finished fabric has consumed approximately 18—16 oz. bottles and saved 10,000 Btus from manufacturing—enough power to light a 17 watt compact fluorescent light for 15 hours.

While I cannot advocate buying new products just for the sake of being “green” when whatever you have now might be perfectly fine, I can tell you that this bag could not have come at a better time - my last bag made of hemp is about finished with it’s life and it was time for a new one. So next time you are in need of a bag like this, you might want to check these guys out - it’s a great bag and one I can say will probably last me a pretty long time! act2 - GreenSmart

I am going to ask you guys for your advice with this post. We moved here to Taos, NM, a little while ago and while the town claims to be very progressive, even proclaiming to be a “Fair-Trade Town”, they have a major Achilles’ Heel - They do not recycle any plastic at all. Nothing. Not even a soda bottle’s worth. This is a big problem for us and I am sure for many other families in town here, but nothing seems to be in progress to remedy it. This is going to be a huge project (and pet peeve of mine), I imagine!

At this point, it looks like I only have one option to get any plastics recycled: sneak it into our friend’s recycling down in Santa Fe, as at least they have seen the light when it comes to how important recycling is! While Taos does recycle some paper and some aluminum (but not all of it, i.e. cereal boxes), any plastics I have to bag separately and keep in the garage until we head down the hill to Santa Fe. We don’t buy many products in plastic other than OJ, yogurt, and my wife’s bathroom supplies, they still add up over time. And we do not feel comfortable just throwing in the trash to be buried in the earth here in town. It’s just not right, but it is our only option right now.

While I am going to work to try to get the town to see the light on plastic recycling, I have a few other things I want to try as well if at all possible:

1. Do a deal with Terracycle so they get the entire town’s plastic soda bottles. Terracycle uses these bottles to package their own cleaning supplies, plant food, bird seed, etc - so that no new plastic is used for their packaging. (Look for a review here in a few weeks, as they sent me some sample products.) On their website, they say they aren’t in need of more bottles, but maybe I can talk them into doing some kind of deal.

2. Set up something where people get gift cards or even cash for turning in plastic recyclables. Maybe get local businesses to step up and give gift cards, or get a big business or two to give some money to get a program started. Not sure how that would work, but money always encourages people to do the right thing. (fortunately and unfortunately)

A few years back someone started a petition online to get the town to recycle (and there is one available right now for a ban of plastic bags, which is great), but I guess it did not work out. So it almost looks like the town is not interested in changing, and any efforts will have to come from the community. Maybe some of the ideas above will work, but this is where I need your help: Do you have any ideas on how to move forward with getting a town to recycle? Anyone know of any groups or individuals who have made these type of changes? If you have any advice or ideas, I would love to hear them!