Recycling costs often seem to outweigh the benefits, especially in poor, rural communities, but Brazilian surfer Cassio Tramontini has shown that high-efficiency machinery is not needed in order to make an impact. After seeing a fisherman throw his garbage into the ocean in Indonesia, the social innovator started a project that utilises littered PET bottles found around the globe as building material.

Together with two friends, he created Return Projects (www.returnprojects.com), and their first undertaking was to make stand-up paddleboards from plastic bottles. The start-up was launched in Porto Alegre / Brazil and engaged 140 children who received lessons about ecology and environmental preservation. They learned to build paddleboards, using more than 600 plastic bottles collected from a nearby river.

Watch this YouTube video about plastic bottle Return Projects.