What shall we do with an old plastic bottle - PET Heatshrink Tape

Back that the start of July a friend sent me a link to a video showing a really cool idea for recycling drinks bottles into heatshrink plastic tape - unfortunately for me the video was in Russian and although there were subtitles it was still rather hard to work out the details. I was recently reminded of the idea when watching Luke from the MIGardener channel building a trellis from sunflower stalks, so I decided to have a go at replicating the results from the Russian video today.

The original video can be found here...


It's well worth a watch even if you can't understand the language as you'll be able to see why I think this is such a cool idea and exactly what it was that I was trying to replicate.

[robertbaldwin]

I stumbled across the Russian fella too and loved his idea so spent today making the device only to struggle with it too. I can now see its the way I'm mounting the bottle, thanks so much! Will make some amends and if it works will use to tie garden canes together for peas, beans etc

[GarbageDevon]

It's a bummer this video (and pt. 2) don't have more views. This stuff is very useful!

[donaldblankenship-phun]

He's worth his weight in gold in Sing Sing.

[ThingsWhichArentWork]

My latest efforts on YouTube now - recycling plastic drink bottles into heat-shrink tape for use around the home and garden. Enjoy!

[donaldblankenship-phun]

Where I live one pint of bottled water is $1 - $2. It's alot cheaper to buy twine than water.

[mattharrah]

Awesome! Great job and thank you for sharing. The people who make and sell shrink tape are probably less than happy with you ha-ha. You should make and sell the jig you made. I would buy it from you. A great green idea.

[ponicwars]

Well done! Glad you pushed through the frustration and found a working solution. I have this picture of you running around your yard with PET string and a blowtorch looking for things to fasten. haha! 

[GardeningWithPuppies]

That was great. I'll have to show this to hubby.

[CarlosCastillo-zffb]

You can solve the problem of the short stripes by adding a stick that goes through the bottle mouth keeping the whole bottle in place. You also won't need to hold it while using it.

[congresstart]

What's the thing called cutting it where do u get em from

[donaldblankenship-phun]

I coulda skipped the plumber's arse part, but then agin I killed my parents.

[earthdog]

Why didn't you just imitate the Russian's model? His was very simple and he didn't have to hold the bottle, and his machine could make tape of three different widths.