Brazil Designer Makes Upcycled Skateboards by Melting Collected Bottle Caps in Pizza Ovens

A man in Brazil is churning out new skateboards from not-so-new materials.

"It's made 100% from recycling plastic that is collected, recycled, and fabricated here in Rocinha," Arian Rayegani from Na Laje Designs explained.

And that plastic he's using is from bottle caps.

The project is the brainchild of Canadian Arian Rayegani, who moved to Rio de Janeiro right before the pandemic hit. He's even recruited neighbors to collect the bottle caps for him so he can make these boards. 

Each one takes 500 bottle caps that are cleaned, churned, arranged, and then melted in a pizza oven.

And he's hoping his operation will grow to be able to make more things out of waste.

"Today we work on plastic, but tomorrow we want to be able to recycle paper, metal, glass, and beyond that," Rayegani adds.

"We want to bring the next generation, bring the kids here, to learn about it, to prevent the issue, to not to bring into the ocean."

Rayegani says his neighborhood produces over 200 tons of garbage a day, and the more of it he's able to reuse and recycle, the better it will be for the whole community.

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