News - Off Beat Stories
Plastic bottles recycled into blankets
Posted: Dec 14, 2009 6:59 AM by NBC
Updated: Dec 14, 2009 6:59 AM
Thrown away plastic bottles are being reincarnated as blankets for disaster victims on the other side of the world.
A Buddhist charity organization has been collecting plastic bottles from Taiwan's capital Taipei for the past three years to convert them into about 244,000 polyester blankets intended for disaster zones.
The concept is based on an idea developed by a Taiwan entrepreneur.
The group sends the plastic bottles to a factory that breaks them down into a polyester fabric, which is then sent to a crew of volunteers who make it into blankets or garments.
The factory produces more than 3,000 blankets a day.
The blankets have been sent to disaster zones all over the world, including here in the US. The group sent thousands of blankets to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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