Spotted: Plastic Bottlecap Rainbow Mural

'When the Beach Met the Bay' uses plastic bottlecaps to make a statement about plastic pollution.

Did you know that even in areas that accept plastic bottles for recycling, the bottlecap often isn't recyclable?

Isn't that crazy? That means for billions of plastic bottles, there are non-recyclable plastic caps clogging the waste stream, making recycling plants less efficient as they dig them out, and eventually filling up our landfills. If you want to find out if your area accepts plastic bottlecaps for recycling, contact your local waste management department. Some places will take the bottles with the caps on, others require that you remove the caps, and some just plain can't recycle plastic bottlecaps.

Of course, the best way to avoid this problem is to skip plastic bottles all together, but somehow those suckers tend to creep in, don't they? Artist Lisa Be decided to raise awareness about the problem of plastic bottlecaps by transforming all of that trash into a beautiful rainbow mural.

The project  - called "When the Beach Met the Bay" - came out of Project Vortex, a New York group of artists looking to shine a light on plastic pollution. It's on display in Long Beach, NY and incorporates 24,000 plastic bottlecaps that kids collected just on Long Beach.

Yep - they were able to gather 24,000 plastic bottlecaps on one single beach. I think that alone speaks volumes about the plastic pollution problem, don't you?

Image via Public Art Fund