A while back I was writing about making sure you emptied out those plastic water bottles before recycling them.

That's still a excellent practice, and I also mentioned uses for the bottle itself.

Well, now comes yet another use — automobile car seats!

A major U.S. auto manufacturer, in this case Ford, announced its Focus cars will use post-consumer plastics to make the fabric that will become car seats. This could net the re-use of approximately 22 plastic containers per vehicle.

It is another example of a way to help conserve resources, re-use already manufactured products and keep energy costs down. All worthy efforts.

In addition, water consumption per vehicle could go down from 9.5 to 3.5 meters per unit. Again, something saved in a construction — production or manufacture process — is something that can be used perhaps better somewhere else.

And protecting the water supply should be of vital interest to all of us.

Keep finding yourself putting those plastic bottles into recycle containers and allow people the opportunity to find more uses, or should I say, re-uses, for them.