ROANOKE (WSLS 10) - A local artist is working to improve the environment by recycling Starbucks gift cards.
The owner of Upcycled Gifts, Joe Stanley is taking them and creating jewelry, knives, guitar picks and other items.
Stanley said he wants to keep these cards from ending up in landfills.
"There are 1.6 billion gift cards printed each year, and that's 9,000 tons of polyvinyl chloride. It's not recycleable. Starbucks and I are the same age. They started the same week that I was born, I make all sorts of jewelry bracelets necklaces you name it!," says Stanley.
Within a six-month period, a local Starbucks store gave him 30,000 leftover gift cards.