Ocean Battered Flip Flop Sandals Recycled Into Assorted Arts & Crafts

It's no mystery that the ocean is clogged with our plastic-based waste but did you know that there are so many flip flop sandals that get beached each year that several organizations have formed just to salvage them?

Since 2005, UniqEco's has converted 175,000 flip-flops that were previously prohibiting turtles from nesting into beads, sea animal shaped toys and other crafty objects.

In addition to cleaning up the natural environment and spreading awareness of the plight of sea creatures that encounter our consumer flotsam, this effort also helps the local Nairobi economy by creating jobs that previously weren't available.

The WWF Kiunga Project -- which employs local Kenyan artisans to create handbags, lampshades, hair clips, necklaces, toys and curtains out of recycled flip-flops -- was set up in 2007 when the threat to turtle populations was fully grasped.

Sea turtles take up to 30 years to reach sexual maturity and choose Kenyan shores to mate and lay eggs, but the shores are traditionally ridden with plastic ocean waste and flip flops, the latter of which they consume and up dying from.

Most recently, Camp International spearheaded 7 Kenyan beach cleanups utilizing British student volunteers, resulting in the collection of 7000 flip flops (among 200 bags of assorted waste).

Working with local artisans, the sandals were then recycled into a life sized replica of a shark and a whale in order to help publicize the fact that we must stop using the ocean -- which is their habitat -- as our own personal dumping ground. This all begs the question -- how are so many sandals ending up in the ocean in the first place?