Recycled Gardening Products

With summer coming up, many people, myself included, will start working in our gardens and flowerbeds again.  While tending to these greens, why not use materials and products that are green?  Here are some of the newest recycled gear I came across that are great for all your outdoor needs.

•    Discarded plastic that often takes up room in landfills can now be recycled into buckets and barrels.  Remember to recycle your own old buckets so that they don’t end up in a landfill.
•    Plastic bottles can also be recycled into work gloves.  How is that possible, you may ask? These gloves aren’t hard or uncomfortable to wear like you may think.  Instead, the companies that create these gloves are very careful to turn the used plastic into soft yet durable fibers.  The gloves are completely machine washable and dryable as well. I actually own a pair of these gloves and love using them for gardening on a Sunday afternoon.
•    Old tires can be recycled as well.  They can be turned into mulch to keep weeds out of your garden or into walkways. They can also be used to create rubber shingles for roofs in residential areas.

While it may seem like a new idea, the concept of taking old plastic and turning it into fibers that can be made into cloth items has been around since the 1980’s.  It was first used to make carpets, but at the time those coarse fibers would never have worked as gloves.  However, over the years the technology has been refined to create a new, soft textile.  Each recycled glove is made out of one 250 milliliter plastic bottle.  New technology that will use two bottles to make an almost 100% recycled glove is currently being tested. It’s great to see that there really is a use for those old plastic bottles after all.

Related posts:

1. Timberland Creates Boots That Can Be Recycled
2. Beauty Products Turn to Paper Packaging
3. Riding in the Mud? Get Some Recycled Mud Guards
4. Recycled Home Made from Loofah
5. Keep the Heater Off and Your Fingers Warm.