In Uruguay, customers can pay for shoes with plastic bottles

Uruguayan shoe brand MAMUT are accepting plastic bottles as payment for their summer line — in an effort to help clean up local beaches

It is heartening to see recycling creeping up the agenda of many businesses — from small eco-friendly enterprises to multinationals hoping to improve their repuations, more and more companies are doing their bit. We have already seen the dreaded plastic bottle turned into everything from mosaic tiles to a school and now, Uruguayan shoe brand MAMUT are accepting plastic bottles as payment for their summer shoe line, to assist a drive to clean up local beaches.

For a two week period, this February, customers can exchange bottles they have used or collected to finance up to 40 percent of their instore purchase. Each bottle is worth 100 Uruguayan Pesos — about USD 4 — and can been put towards anything in the ‘Native’ summer line. The project is in collaboration with Cempre and Cooperative Juan Charpa, who will recycle all the bottles they receive. Could other businesses encourage recycling with similar schemes?