Where do disposable plastic water bottles go when they die, aka get thrown out? The vast majority end up in landfills, some others float out into the sea, and just 23% get recycled. But a minuscule number of plastic bottles go to what’s equivalent to bottle heaven: They’re upcycled into art, jewelry, and home accessories!

Crafty designers and artists are turning eco-blights into eco-conscious treasures. Need some jewelry? Stop by Architect Gulnur Ozdaglar’s Etsy store to check out how gorgeous plastic bottle jewelry can really be. (via re-nest) Check out this gorgeous turquoise PET necklace — which can be yours for $80!

Gulnur, who keeps a blog about her handiwork, also makes household decorations like this flower bowl below.

If you want that bowl for your coffee table, it’ll put you back $75 — but DIYers might want to try their own hand at PET bowl-making! Instructables has the details, so all you need are a bottle, cutter or scissors, soldering iron, and a flame to make this:

For simpler DIY ideas, stop by Make-Stuff, which has suggestions for transforming used water bottles into everything from a pop bottle snowman to a bird feeder.

But the coolest PET upcycling project, IMHO, is artist Miwa Koizumi’s PET pets. Miwa turned PET plastic into floaty pet sea creatures!

“I love the idea of using liquid containers to make water animals. Contained/containing, trash/not-trash, like the jelly-fish or anemone: Living/non-living,” writes Miwa. “And I wanted some pets…”

The biggest plastic water bottle project I’ve seen is the Junk Raft, which was made of 15,000 plastic bottles and other odds and ends. Last year, two environmental activists floated on this raft, making a trip from Long Beach to Hawaii to educate people about the problems of plastic waste.

Which is to say that even though a few crafty people have been able to make pretty and useful things out of plastic bottles, bottled water should really be avoided as much as possible! After all, a lot more plastic’s floating and polluting our oceans than are upcycled into jewelry, bowls, or rafts….

Photos top to bottom: Gulnur Ozdaglar / Etsy; Instructables, Miwa Koizumi

Update, 4/29/09: Film review — Addicted to Plastic: Become a plastic expert in 85 minutes

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