Now you may be saying to yourself, “a plastic bottle doesn’t seem real comfortable”. But in fact, it can be made to be. Pet bed manufacturer Bowsers has found a revolutionary way to construct polyester fibers from recycled plastic (PET) soda bottles. The bottles are first refined and purified before being chopped down into tiny flakes where they are processed into spun fiber strands. The strands are then knitted and woven together to create their “Eco-Tech” fabric.

Dubbed their Eco+ line, these pet beds meet all the requirements of a top of the line bed. They are soft, yet firm, and provide an unsurpassed night’s sleep for your dog. They perform just like non-recycled fabrics and you won’t be able to tell the difference. The Eco-Tech fleece also stays warm, is durable, retains color, and is machine washable.

Every year, billions of pounds of plastic bottles enter landfills throughout the United States. Not only do they take hundreds of years to begin to decay, but they use up countless resources and even potentially leak toxic additive into our groundwater. In a nutshell, not a lot of good comes from having a ton of plastic bottles taking up space in a landfill.

Depending on the size of the bed, you can help divert 20-30 plastic bottles from ever reaching a landfill. So besides keeping our landfills a little lighter, you also ensure that virgin materials are not being used in the fiber manufacturing process. Recycled fibers also use less petroleum and other natural resources. Which means you’ll also be helping keep harmful emissions out of the air which can cause acid rain and smog.

Currently there are four eco-friendly dog beds from Bowsers that we carry. Many come in various colors and sizes. You have the Eco+ Tahoe, Orbit Bolster, Futon, or one I’m sure Woody Harrelson would be proud of, the Hemp dog bed. All are competitively priced with their non-recycled counterparts and just as durable.

While there isn’t a huge selection of recycled dog beds on the market these days, it is a trend that we feel is only going to get more popular. There is of course caution with many consumers when it comes to the quality of recycled materials, but as technology has advanced, these materials are as strong, if not stronger than those made with virgin materials. In fact, you may be lounging on the couch right now with a fleece blanket made from plastic bottles and not even know it.

So if nothing here tickles your fancy, at least you’ll be armed with the knowledge that you can make a comfortable bed out of those old Diet Pepsi bottles you drank out of this afternoon. And with some luck, and consumer pressure, we can see all manufacturers using these technologies to make our planet a little cleaner.

The device works by hooking a plastic tag to your dog’s collar. Then plugging in a USB receiver to your computer that is connected to the internet. There is some software to install and of course you’ll need to create a Twitter account. When your dog is in range of the receiver, the page will update with one of 500 randomly generated Tweets whenever they move or bark.

Now I’m a sucker for just about any dog gadget, and when you mix the internet and technology with it, I’m sold. But on this one, I don’t really see the benefit. First, the tweets are randomly generated and really aren’t telling us anything specific. It also seems like it could be annoying to a follower if the dog is real active. A hyperactive puppy could take down Twitter’s servers on their own with how much they bark and move. Not to mention that the software on the computer has to run and update which may slow things down if you’re using it. The one thing it has going for it is that it’s only $30.

I don’t think the concept is completely garbage though. In fact, I have a few suggestions for the fine folks at Mattel to make the device more useful.

I’d like to see Puppy Tweets connect to open networks and tweet from the collar. This would allow the addition of a GPS that would let them tell their followers when they’re on a little road trip. Making the sensor know when the dog is playing or just sleeping shouldn’t be too difficult. If the dog has been moving at a steady pace, let it tweet back that they just went on a walk. There are countless possibilities to something like this and while it would be more expensive, I think it would offer much more. If an owner is willing to setup a Twitter page for their dog, I think they’d be willing to invest a few dollars into a nice gadget.

So while the toy creators at Mattel have an intriguing idea, we may need the help of Steve Jobs to turn this into a must-have gadget (iDog anyone?). For me, I don’t have a lot of interest in reading corny generic randomly generated tweets. I’d rather have the owner behind it and the true personality of the dog seen. My dog will stick to a designer dog collar that isn’t communicating wirelessly with the rest of the world.