By Andru Shively

What wood you do to stop plastics going to waste? In the northernmost US state of Alaska, former fisherman Patrick Simpson and his company Alaska Plastic Recovery (APR, Anchorage; www.alaskaplasticrecovery.com) have been collecting otherwise-unrecycled plastic items from local communities and converting them into “durable, environmentally friendly, economical, and easy to maintain construction materials”.

The result is Recycled Plastic Lumber (RPL) – or Grizzly Wood – which is derived from a mix of HDPE, LDPE, polypropylene, and polyamides. The recycler’s website also hints at a future Grizzly Brick (Recycled Plastic Brick, RPB), to be converted from waste PET.

Related: That’ll teach you – litter-ly

RPL reportedly has both a longer lifetime and lower maintenance costs than traditional lumber – with agricultural, shipping, recreation, and transportation among the fields of application, for use in a range of products from fences and flower boxes to park bridges and piers.

Simpson told local media that he started the venture in response to the state’s plastics-littered coastline and to encourage Alaskans to recycle more – even calling on them to mail in plastics waste that can’t be recycled in their area, which some have done! But it goes both ways: Alaska Plastic Recovery is entirely mobile, travelling to communities to recover the plastics directly. So, if you’re a local, keep your seasoned eye out for wandering grizzlies – only now, you’ll want them to rifle through your rubbish.