People are Turning Recycled Plastic Bottles into Face Shields for Protection
Health care workers are facing a shortage of masks during the COVID-19 crisis. To avert the severity of the crisis and stop the spread of the virus, many people are making their own face coverings to help ease the mask shortage. People are judiciously turning recycled plastic bottles into face shields amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In Upstate New York, Bon Secours Health System family nurse practitioner Elizabeth King and her husband are making face shields out of the two-liter Pepsi bottles.
Image: Carolina Canners Inc.
The Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had recommended that bandannas could be used by health care workers as a last resort. Following this advice, King took the help of the internet to find ways to make masks or face shields and discovered that others were using plastic soda bottles.
To see the practicality of this experiment, she took a bottle and cut off the top and bottom. As it turned out, it could work out as a shield, so she reached out to Pepsi and received an initial donation of 50 two-liter bottles to use for this project.
King’s husband started off to work with the initial investment. King said,
He came up with [the idea of] bending plastic molding heated with a heat gun. Then he puts it [the bottle] on a frame he made to bend it into a U-shape to go around the forehead. He takes screws and washers to the bottle and adds a sponge to it where it won’t sit so close that it will fog up. The bottom [of the shield] curves to provide protection.
She further added that once the face shield is made, the couple was using the leftover upholstery provided by a neighbor for the fabric to tie the shield on.
So far, King has given 45 face shields to Bon Secours Health System. With the additional 100 bottles donated by Pepsi, as well as other donated materials from Lowes and Home Depot, she expects to turn in 100 additional shields this week.
Image: News CGTN
Ayden North Carolina-based Minges Bottling Group and co-op partner Carolina Canners Inc., out of Cheraw, S.C. are donating materials to hospitals. This initiative came in motion after King and her husband fashioned the face shield out Pepsi bottle.
Meanwhile, similar requests have come in and Pepsi of Florence joined in with 1,000 bottles. When a healthcare system in eastern North Carolina requested, Minges Bottling stepped in to help.
As the country fights off the COVID-19 pandemic, personal protective equipment (PPE) is dwindling. Due to this, nurses at the Medical City wore improvised face shields made from recycled plastic bottles.
Image: MSN
Nurses from the cardiovascular and telemetry unit proudly showed off their DIY gear as they continue to serve the public amid the rising cases of coronavirus. These improvised face shields were donated to them by Atty. Jeanette Tolentino and Camella School Teachers.
People are making their own personal protective equipment at home, given the scarcity in this current pandemic.
Meanwhile, a group of Buddhist monks near Bangkok has been making face masks from recycled plastic bottles to help prevent the spread of the disease, while simultaneously reducing plastic pollution as well.
Buddhist monk Chamnanwej Sutthiyano’s face mask made from recycled plastic bottles and inscribed with spiritual incantations at Wat Chak Daeng Buddhist temple in Samut Prakan / Image: Lillian Suwanrumpha
Chak Daeng temple is popular for a campaign, led by its environmentally conscious abbot, that produces robes from the 15 tonnes of plastic waste it receives every year. Monks and volunteers weave synthetic fibers, which are extracted from the plastic, with cotton into piles of saffron-colored cloth.
