Discover How To Make Shovels With Recycled Plastic Bottles

It is amazing to realize how the ingenuity of people can transform the things that we routinely discard. The truth is, we can do amazing things, like turning plastic bottles into useful shovels.

We accumulate and generate a large amount of garbage, which makes many of us wonder if we cannot do something with everything we produce. Thus, a great solution is recycling.

Recycling has to be a citizen obligation, of course. However, we refer to recycling as a technique for creating new products from others already manufactured.

As you know, there are many things that we can use. For example, canned food containers, used and old dishes, bowls, cutlery, glasses and, of course, plastic bottles.

Plastic bottles are often the protagonists of the most amazing transformations. Plastic is a hard and resistant product as well as malleable. They present it to us, depending on the format of the bottle, in many ways, and we just have to choose the container that best suits our project.

How to make shovels out of plastic bottles?

Plastic bottles can be of different sizes and strengths. In this case, to make some shovels, we will need the hard plastic bottles.

If you are fond of gardening and you are starting in this world of plants, natural decoration and everything that goes with it, you will realize all the material that is needed. Do not worry about the money, the first investment will not necessarily be high if you take our advice into account.

Materials:

• Marker or permanent marker, it will serve as a guide
• A sharp cutter
• Some scissors to finish off the cuts
• Bottle or bottles that you want to transform

preparation:

• First take the chosen bottle and outline or draw on it the shape you want to make. Guide yourself and look at the images that we show you. You can select the type of tip you want.
• Once painted and with a clear idea, cut it out with the help of the utility knife and scissors. Be careful not to hurt yourself because it can scratch you.
• Then, when you have it in your hand, trim and refine the edges so that they are very smooth. You can even sand it down a bit to make sure there isn’t a chipped area left that could hurt you.

Observations

As you can see in the drawing, you can create two different scoops depending on the type of bottle you have. It is important to maintain the handle, because it is the essential piece for our shovel to work.

The shovel that we will get can not only be used for garden and earth work tasks, but we can also use it in multiple activities. We can take it to the beach, the country or the mountains.

The size, of course, will depend on the size of the container. Although it is true that according to our needs we can make the surface of the blade wider so that it has more capacity, we have to control that the weight does not deform it. Do not forget that it is plastic and not iron or metal.

On the other hand, we can make another version of our shovel, as in the image we show you above. This time the boat is wider and what has been done is a straight cut, always respecting the handle.

Blade types

There are no limits to our imagination:  infinite shapes can be created and each one serving a different use.

• Shovels for the garden in the form of a beak. 

• Oval-shaped garden shovels so as not to spoil the roots.
• Square shaped beach shovels . 
• Scoops with holes to clean cat litter. 
• We can make rakes, as long as the type of plastic is suitable to withstand the pressure of contact with the ground.

As you have seen, it is very easy to make these blades from our hard plastic bottles.

Also, if you want to give them a touch of color, you can paint and decorate them to your liking; a good idea is that your children participate and thus begin to help you with the garden tasks.