How to make a thatched roof from PET bottles

Plastic thatch from PET bottles
Source: http://www.inhabitat.com

Here’s an idea!  So many bottles dumped in Fiji every year and thatching is also now hard to come by as the land is cleared and unsustainable farming practice leaves little room for growing traditional building materials.

Thatch can be made from plastic bottles cut into long strips – this man has made a machine, but it is really quick to do it by hand.  My son loves doing it just for fun when I am trying to make other useful stuff from the bottles – he does one in about a minute.

Perfect for tropical climates.

http://inhabitat.com/hand-powered-machine-can-make-thatch-roofs-from-plastic-bottles-in-tropical-climates/

How to make a solar garden flower light from recycled PET bottles – take two

Solar flower light emits a soft glow through the PET flowers at night

Pretty and chirpy during the day in the sun

Well, so many people have been searching my site for the real “how to” instructions for making a flower out of PET bottles, and my last post didn’t really do full justice to the process, so I have made amends below.  This is attempt number two.  For attempt number one (fluro light cover) see here.

Attempt number two is a solar flower light that I have hanging in the garden.

Wash PET bottles

Cut in half with stanley knife – I found it easy to just make a small cut with the knife then cut the rest with scissors

Cut both the tops and the bottom halves into strips with scissors

Fold the petals back and kind of crunch them up so that they look like flowers

keep any small snipped out bits for the centre of the flowers

spray paint everything in a few colours

poke a couple of holes in the bottom of each of your new flowers to thread wire through

poke holes in the centre bits also – I used a soldering iron for this

thread wire through the flowers, attaching a centre bit or stamen as needed

use the wire to attach to an old piece of chicken wire or fly screen

once you have all the flowers attached to the fly screen, make into  circle and secure

then use wire and hang some flowers artistically from the bottom

use curtain ring to make a hanger for the light

I used a small solar bulb made by Nokero (short for No Kerosene) and used another curtain ring to hang it inside the middle of the light

If I had access to solar fairy lights here in Fiji, that would be my first preference.

it really looks beautiful at night, and because I used bright colours, it is also pretty during the day

it took me a morning to figure it out but I am glad I did it.  It is one small step to making some use of the bottles that are everywhere here in Fiji, and a small step to getting them out of the environment!  The thing is, PET bottles can be recycled, but you have to actually send them to recycling for that to work.

As Mother Teresa once said, “to keep a lamp burning, you have to put oil in it”

TIP FOR NEW PLAYERS:  I did think it would look pretty with some fairy lights hanging in it, but even though the fairy lights have the wires insulated, when I turned it on, it did look beautiful, but as I made the frame out of metal fly wire, when I touched it, it gave me a shock, so then I went to the solar version.