This is an instructable on how to create your VERY own, special, unqiue, just-for-you, made-by-you, never-gonna-see-in-walmart, adult car seat covers. Just so you know, this is the first seat cover I've ever made, so I'm teaching both of us!Here's what you need:A cheapo/uggo seat cover that you'd never wanna use in a million billion trillion years.A sewing machineThreadFabric**Around 1.5 yards of 1/2 inch wide elastic Something to copy your pattern onto (newspaper, carboard, posterboard)PinsScissorsMusic (to have a mid car seat making dance party or just enjoyment.)Patience**For fabric, these are my suggestions:For this use the fabric of your choice, but I will admit that for the seat part of your cover (where you sit and where you lean back) Cotton, twills and normal woven fabrics will work better. For the back and the underseat of your cover, you should use a knit or fitting it to your seat might be difficult.You will need approximately 1.75 yards for the seat part. 1.75 yards for the back and underside of the seat, and 1.75 yards of the quilt batting for the comfort of your seat.

(These are high estimates, you can probably get away with 1.5 yards, but you will have to squeeze it in tight.)/view_listing.php?listing_id=6328532Step 1: Find the ugliest/cheapest universal carseat cover.Show All Items« PreviousNext »View All Steps DownloadMany of the 12 million car seats Americans buy every year eventually end up in a landfill.Non Surgical Weight Loss Success Stories Recycling would reduce the amount of car seat landfill waste, but it's in effect in limited places. Oak Tree Hardwood Parquet FlooringSome states and communities offer local recycling of some seat parts, though there isn’t a large-scale effort to manage this waste. T-Shirts DiceOne reason: Stripping down seats and separating the various materials for recycling is a highly manual (aka expensive) process.

Consumer Reports knows all about the limited recycling options. There's no local outlet for recycling the car seats we've tested, though we have found a place that takes the Styrofoam seat lining of the seats. The best alternative is to recycle as much of the seat as you can yourself. Before you do the work, ask the local department of public works whether the plastic from the seat is accepted in the local recycling program—some seats have metal molded in. If you're ready to retire a seat, use these tips, courtesy of the recycling program in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They're especially important, because data shows that you'll go through three car seats for each of your kids over the years. Use scissors to cut off the fabric, foam padding, and harness straps from the seat. Use a Phillips-head screwdriver to remove as much metal as possible. Some cannot be removed easily. Remove the car seat cover and any padding underneath it. Discard the fabric, foam padding, straps, and mixed metal/plastic pieces and small

Mark the plastic as expired or unsafe. Recycle the bulky plastic body and all metal pieces. A number of organizations offer periodic car-seat recycling programs or continuously accept seats to recycle. Some will strip the seats for you. Otherwise, look into various community programs listed below. If you find that the only practical alternative is to dispose of the seat in the trash, remove the straps and get rid of them separately, or cut them so that the seat can’t be used again. Colorado Children’s Automobile Safety Foundation Ann Arbor (recycling instructions) Offutt Collision Repair, Bellevue Shade Tree Garage, Morristown University and Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital, various locations Salt Lake City and various other locations Baby Earth Renew, Round Rock For more information about child car seats, see our buying advice and Ratings. Don't buy or sell used car seats

While it is nice to share and reuse baby items, car seats are one product you shouldn’t reuse, especially if you don’t know its history.A seat that has been involved in a crash, for instance, could be dangerous to use, and you might not know whether a manufacturer has recalled a seat.What's more, the components used in the typical car seat deteriorate and weaken over time. That's why car seats have an expiration date stamped on the back, typically six years from the manufacture date. Q: We're moving up a stage in car seats and while we were able to share one with a relative who wanted it and could use it, we don't have a home for the other. I completely understand that many charitable organizations don't accept car seats for liability reasons, and appreciate that many parents would prefer to buy new seats, but it's still a huge plastic-y thing to just park with your curbside trash. Do you have suggestions for readers as to how we can recycle our car seats? I've been researching this and have found companies in a seemingly very limited number of communities offer car seat recycling programs (sometimes coinciding with installation inspection), but haven't found any in my state (CT).

The most viable recycling option I've found is *mailing* the seat to a company in Texas that offers to recycle it - hence my note to you! What do readers do with their old car seats? Any manufacturer programs to take back old seats? Any other inventive repurposing? I'm primarily interested in cases where users aren't passing on or reselling their old seats -- cases you'd really need to recycle it, such as the seat is expired and no longer usable; the seat has been in an accident and hence not usable; or you just can't find anyone to take it/use it (even if still usable/unexpired). Editor: Susannah, we're so glad you asked this question. This is not something we've discussed on Ohdeedoh before and we don't know the answer. Readers - what has happened to your family's car seats when you're done with them? What options are there besides the landfill?Email yours with pic attachments here (those with pics get answered first)By Melissa Slager Herald Writer If you don’t want your expired child car seat to go to a landfill, a local retailer’s trade-in event is not your ticket to eco-friendly disposal.

While trade-ins are offered, recycling child car seats in Snohomish County is not easy. “It’s long been an issue,” said Shawneri Guzman, who heads the Providence Regional Medical Center-sponsored Safe Kids Snohomish County program. “Some places will say, ‘Yeah, we’ll take them,’ and then they’ll get inundated and put the brakes on it.” Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores through Saturday are holding a trade-in promotion. People are encouraged to drop off unwanted or expired child car seats, strollers and cribs to get a 25 percent off coupon for replacement gear at the store. It’s a hassle-free way to get rid of a seat, but recycling is not in that seat’s future. “They’re just taken off the market to make sure no one else uses them,” said Linda Connors, a spokesperson for Toys R Us’ parent company in New Jersey. “We consulted with product safety organizations, and they agreed that disposal of these items is necessary.” Recycling the disparate parts of a child car seat, especially the hard plastic shell, is a labor-intensive and expensive process.

Guzman has been trying to find a recycler willing to take Snohomish County seats. “We’re trying to build a relationship and get some sort of understanding of where we can send people in the county,” she said. For now, though, unless you’re willing to travel to Spokane or Portland or shell out big bucks to ship your seat to Texas, the garbage can remains the primary way to get rid of a child car seat. Car seats are stamped with an expiration date, typically six to 10 years after manufacture. Safety experts say it’s no gimmick to get you to buy another seat. “We use them every day, right?” said Guzman, who has taken extensive training to be a car seat technician for Safe Kids. “Think about it — if you wore the same pair of jeans every day, the buttons wear down, the material starts to wear away.” Add temperature extremes a plastic seat experiences sitting in a car year after year, as well as the constant clicking and unclicking of latches and buckles to get a child in and out.

“That just wears out over time,” she said. The safety features of new models also mean the seat you get for your youngest could be vastly improved over the design you had for your oldest. Guzman pointed to the LATCH and tether system now standard on most car seats as an example. “We saw less head and neck injuries.” Similarly, repurposed car seats can be dangerous. A car seat might not be expired, but if it’s fitted with replacement straps or parts that weren’t made for that model, the seat might not fit properly in the car. It’s a situation Guzman has come across in Snohomish County in her work performing car seat installation checks. She notes that many manufacturers offer replacement parts for specific models, sometimes for free. “Everyone wants to do what’s best for their child. We want to steer them to the safest answers,” she said. Safety concerns are part of the reason disassembling car seats and recycling them is so difficult. Some seats are reinforced with steel.

There are new models that even have electronic components. There are options — if you’re willing to travel or pay. Legacy Health in Portland is nationally known for its recycling program, which includes taking expired car seats that have been stripped and prepared to certain standards. The company is able to do it because of the scale at which it works. Legacy’s 8,500-square-foot recycling center takes in 2,000 tons of material a year, including electronics, Styrofoam, ink cartridges, solvents and more. In 2014, the center recycled just over 6 tons of car seats through a recycling vendor, said Bill Clark, the program’s outgoing director. “We’ve got a unique program. I get calls from all around the U.S. It’d be nice if other people did it,” Clark said. The Portland program has become a resource for locals trying to kick-start similar programs here. The Safe Kids Spokane program, operated by Providence Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital, takes expired car seats at car seat checks and, when they have enough, ships them at no cost to Legacy’s recycling center.

Getting the same deal here is unlikely, according to Kimberly Christensen of CoolMom, a longtime advocate in King County for car seat recycling. The Seattle area could likely produce in a month what Spokane produced in a year. “They don’t want to become inundated,” she said of the Portland program. Farther afield, BabyEarth, an eco-friendly retailer in the Austin, Texas, area, will take expired car seats that are shipped to them. But that might not be practical for a single family. A rough estimate to ship a large car seat comes in at nearly $70 at the cheapest end. Local efforts ‘a stop gap’ Christensen, of Seattle, has been working on the issue for six years. “There’s already so much big stuff to think about in the world” for new parents, “the last thing we want to do is contribute to a bad future for them by trashing all this stuff,” Christensen said. with Zero Waste Washington to connect people with resources and options. For now, one-time recycling events remain the best bet — and those are few.

One store the group partnered with closed during the recession. Then a nonprofit stopped taking expired seats when those seats started vastly outnumbering the reusable seats the group was primarily seeking. A recycler stepped up for a one-day CoolMom event, but only as a pilot project. Locations in Bellevue and Issaquah offer drop-off recycling, but only if you can prove residency. It’s baby steps, Christensen said. CoolMom plans periodic car seat events in King County as it lines up recyclers willing to work with them. Christensen calls it a “stop-gap” while longer-term solutions are worked out. “The one thing that I encourage people to do is always call their car seat manufacturer and ask them, ‘Do you offer recycling and, if not, why not?’ The more they hear from consumers, the more likely they are to consider it,” Christensen added. So far, Clek is the only major manufacturer with a recycling program. Britax, a major car seat manufacturer, is among those that appears to be starting to take notice.

“They’re working currently on some kind of recycling program,” but “it’s in the talks at this point,” said Kristen Johnson, who works for a public relations firm that represents the company. What you can do now Whether you toss your seat or recycle it, there are some specific steps you need to take to get it ready. “Strip it bare,” Guzman said. Remove and cut padding and straps, remove hardware and dispose of it separately, and write “DESTROY” on the car seat shell with permanent marker. Some manufacturers also recommend blacking out serial numbers and manufacturing dates. This helps dissuade scammers who steal parts to reassemble and illegally sell expired car seats on Craigslist. Polystyrene foam might be recyclable by specialty companies, typically outside Snohomish County. Eco Foam Recyclers in Arlington appears to have closed. Keep a lookout for metal recycling fundraisers common to our area, where all-metal buckles can be dropped off.

Clothes for a Cause fundraiser events will take the fabric covers, soft foam pads and straps from car seats. Everett High School’s fastpitch team and its Class of 2016 each have ongoing collections. Small parts that mix plastic and metal and that cannot be taken apart and separated, such as buckles, must be trashed. Buying another car seat? Look to the future. Consider simpler models that are easier to disassemble and recycle, or manufacturers that offer recycling solutions. “Seats are expensive and it can be a hardship on your family budget,” Guzman said. “But whether they’re $40 or $400, they all meet the same federal safety standards.” Have a question about transportation? Please include your first and last name and city of residence. Some ideas for repurposing an expired car seat: * Use the straps and padding to make handbags. * Use the seat for pretend play — they make great spaceship captain chairs, especially tipped toward the ceiling (er, space).