We already knew that you can make awesome plastic recycling projects, but Veronika Richterová has turned this into a unique art form!

Richterová, based in the Czech Republic, uses heat to twist, turn, and cut up the plastic bottles and give them natural forms. Soda and mineral water bottles become flowers, cacti, frogs, and even crocodiles! Over the years, she has used thousands of bottles as art materials and has developed many ways of shaping them.

PET bottles are derived from oil and are notorious for not degrading in nature. This means that the plastic waste has to be collected and recycled – into fiber for clothing, construction materials, other PET containers, and so forth.

In addition to making PET sculpture art, she hosts a PET-ART museum, where she collects bottles from around the world. Currently, the museum hosts about 3000 pieces from 76 countries.

Read on for Richterova’s interview with Bored Panda about her cool artworks!

More info: veronikarichterova.com (h/t: colossal)

“I came across PET bottles for the first time in 1989 while I was studying in Paris, as before then plastic bottles had not been used in Czechoslovakia,” Veronika Richterova told Bored Panda.

“During my time in Paris, I lived in a totally unfurnished hall of residence so we used to drink wine from glasses made from plastic bottles that I had produced”

“However, my PET-­ART started many years later, when, by chance, I heated a bottle and discovered its interesting properties and the potential it had as recycled material for a sculptor”

“I do have favorite themes like plants, palm trees, mirrors, furniture and animals which I continually come back to and periodically develop”

“What excites me are lamps and crystal chandeliers”

“In 2007 I founded a collection of bottles from all over the world which contains at the moment about 3500 pieces from 96 countries. There are many treasures I appreciate, for example, the sophisticated Italian design or very decorative beer bottles from Ukraine…”

Thank you, Veronika Richterova, for answering Bored Panda’s questions about your work!

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