Bottle cap skateboards promote recycling in Brazil

Location: Rocinha favela, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

This skateboard is made of around 500 bottle caps

(SOUNDBITE) (English) CREATOR OF NA LAJE DESIGNS, ARIAN RAYEGANI, SAYING: "It's made 100% from recycling plastic that is collected, recycled and fabricated here in Rocinha."

Na Laje Designs is a project created by Arian Rayegani

who is a Canadian mechanical engineer

The project gives food donations in exchange for bottle caps

"We are not a skateboard factory, it's bigger than this. We want to create a hub and a center of innovation for recycling here in Rocinha.”

The caps are crushed, melted, then placed into a mold

and "cooked" in an industrial pizza oven

Each skateboard takes an average of two hours to complete

Rayegani says the project helps to raise awareness about recycling

“Rocinha produces 230 tons of garbage per day and there is no recycling and waste management locally here that actually deals with this implementation and that is what we want to do. Today we work on plastic but tomorrow we want to be able to recycle paper, metal, glass and beyond that. We want to bring the next generation, bring the kids here, to learn about it, to prevent the issue.”