Oil Spill Booms Resurrected as Chevy Volt Parts

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade—and if life gives you 100 miles' worth of oil-soaked plastic booms, make ... Chevy Volts? That's what GM is doing. The company is breathing new life into a heck of a lot of plastic that was used to help contain the Gulf spill, turning it into 100,000 pounds of plastic resin that will be mixed with recycled tires to create a plastic part that will deflect air around the radiator. GM says the resin will last for all of 2011's production, though Mashable notes the company has only committed to manufacturing 10,000 cars.
(More Gulf oil spill stories.)