How to Make a pop bottle container

Here is how to make a container from pop bottles and a bit of wire.   We use the baskets as collection baskets for recyclables in our small community of La Peñita, Nayarit, Mexico.

We tried small bottles and larger ones.  The smaller bottles are great for smaller baskets but the 2 litre size worked best for the size we wanted.  The two liter version took about 3 man hours to built and the smaller bottle version about twice as long.

A slide show of the process can be found here: Pop Bottle Basket (Jaltemba Bay Recycling)

Los Amigos de La Peñita is a community service organizations dedicated to improving our community.  Recycling is just one of our initiatives.  More about us here: Los Amigos de La Peñita

Step 1: First row

We are going to make a flat sheet of bottles and then roll it into a cylinder.  This first row will become the bottom row in the basket.

Using a soldering iron punch four holes in the bottle opposite each other at the widest part of the bottle.  Two at the top and two at the bottom.  Punch two holes in caps used for spacers.  The cap holes must be as close to the top of the cap as possible because we will be using them later to screw in bottles to form the bottom of the basket.

The first row is a bit different from the others.

String the bottles onto the wire placing a spacer cap between each.  Use the holes at the top of the bottle not the bottom;  those will be used in the next row.

Comments

[l8nite]

WOW you must drink ALOT of coke !  This is a fantastic reuse of material !

[johangn]

Thanks I8nite:  actually our community does drink a lot of Coke but believe it or not acquiring the bottles is still about a third of the labour involved in building one of these baskets and that does not include collecting them into the giant pile of bottles at our conpactor from which we sort out the usable ones.