Who wants bottles and cans when there’s #1 PET plastics?
I have endless stories about my experiences in creating Recycled Beauty photos. Most are hysterical. I’m fairly certain, this scenario will give you a good hearty laugh. Here goes a story about sorting through bottles and cans in search of #1 PET plastic.
I was in need of lots, lots and lots of #1 PET plastics for a photo illustrating that recovered #1 PET plastic is made into Repreve fabric and products. As with any Recycled Beauty photo, visual variety is crucial. Showing diversity among brands, shapes and sizes is a means to catch more peoples’ familiarity with what #1 PET plastic actually is. Plastic bottles is the most common use but #1 PET is also vegetable containers and some bathroom products.
Some people get weird when strangers sort through their recyclables. I get it / I don’t get it. Anyway, I figured devouring a neighborhood with a high set-out rate of recycle bins in the middle of the night before collection day was my best bet for reaching the largest selection and volume of free #1 PET plastic.
It was midnight. My neighbor joined the adventure for fun but also safety. Doing this kind of thing seemed normal and in-character for me. Whereas, he was in hysterics most of the time calling his friends reporting our latest findings. That made me ponder perhaps this was more weird than I thought. I smiled for the weirdness and felt satisfied that I was on task and getting what I needed.
We decided to hit one more strip of hours, after two hours of rummaging through recyclables. All of a sudden a guy yelled at us from about 2 houses down saying, “I have a ton of cans over here if you want them”. I yelled back saying, “Thanks, but we’re actually looking for #1 PET plastics”. Silence. That made me laugh hysterically. Okay, maybe it was more weird than I realized.
It was fun searching for such innocuous material like bandits in the middle of the night. It’s not that rummaging through discarded waste is my big dream. Rather, I find the treasure hunt for the most obscure shaped containers that fit within the #1 PET plastic criteria to be thrilling. More importantly, it was the thought of all that pre-production fun leading up to creating a captivating photo could inspire / educate / change peoples’ recycling habits. That's awesome! Seriously, who wants bottles and cans when there’s #1 PET plastics?
Stay tuned to hear a story about the making of the #1 PET photo...
Please take a look at the Recycled Beauty portfolio. It’d be great to hear what you think!