13 Ways of Looking at an Old Plastic Baby Bottle

We have quite a collection of small Avent plastic bottles with the sealing disks. I used them to freeze breast milk and veggies for my older son when he was a baby (YIKES!). By the time our second son arrived about a year ago, I had purged plastic as much as possible. Toys I was able to freecycle without much bad conscience. I figured if parents wanted them, that was their decision. But I felt that giving these bottles to someone was ethically sketchy. I don’t think any baby should be eating and drinking from them. On the other hand I am a compulsive re-user, and hate the idea of throwing yet another pile of plastic stuff in the trash (I don’t think they are recyclable). Is there any safe use I could make of them? What’s the best route to take?

-- Claire from Cincinnati

Hi Claire

Great question. Very topical. Well, off the top of my head, a strange list:

1. Freeze water in them and turn them in to ice packs. After a long day with a two-year-old in the Ergo carrier, I’d be glad to stick a frozen bottle on my lower back.

2. All of the plastic Tupperware sort of stuff we used in our former life have become tub toys. Find out what the plastic is and if it is one of the ones considered safer, (#1 , #2, #4 or #5) – drop them in the bath.

3. Same theory as last suggestion but different pool of water: now that it’s getting warmer, use them as wading pool toys.

4. Try them out in the sandbox/on the beach.

5. Use them as office organizers – collect coins, tacks, paperclips, and the like in individual bottle containers.

6. Use them as workshop organizers – label and fill with different size nails and screws.

7. Use them for art projects -- they can be bodies and something else can be a “head,” attach arms etc.

8. Fill them with items you have lying around (beads or shells?) and turn them in to rattles or musical shakers.

9. Decorate them and use them in the kids’ room as color pencil holders.

10. Pick wildflowers and use a bunch of them in a row as a funky vase presentation. (You might want to tape paper around them to make this prettier – a good thing to do with paper that has print on one side only.)

11. String and tie them to someone’s “Just Married” car (how fitting).

12. Check out craft sites like allfreecrafts.com for other ideas. Many of them have information on doing things with soda and water bottles – these can translate to baby bottle crafts, too.

13. If they do recycle the kind of plastic they’re made of in your area, by all means just recycle them.

Have fun! Anyone else have suggestions? Please post in comments.