Now that you’re dedicated to using cool printed reusable grocery bags, what will you do with your surplus of plastics that have accumulated around your house? Here are two nifty ideas that made news this week.

1. Make gasoline! A Japanese inventor has created a machine suitable for home use that can turn plastic waste into fuel. Akinori Ito's machine heats up household plastics, traps the vapors in a system of pipes and water chambers that cools and condenses them back into crude oil. The crude is suitable for use in generators and some types of stoves and can be further refined into gasoline.

2. Make beds! Four women in West Virginia have found a way to turn plastic bags into sleeping mats for the homeless—and all it takes is a crochet stitch. Instead of having balls of yarn, the women wrap the strips of plastic around each other into balls of "parm." They provide the parm to anyone who wants to crochet. Each mat can take up to a month to make. The lightweight mats are warm enough to act as a light blanket, and more comfortable than sleeping on the cold, hard ground.

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