I've been following the Precious Plastic project for a while now: it's a project for small scale plastic recycling, based on sharing knowledge open source so that anybody in the world can access it for free.
I think i'll write more about this in the future, i totally love what they're doing, but recently the project celebrated its 10 year anniversary and they made a lovely recap video. I think more people should see it: precious plastic has a superstrong real life community, but their youtube channel doesn't have that big of an audience because it was started only one year and a half ago. So,
Here's the link:
And i hope it will reach as many people as possible!
Help there’s a cool Japanese town called Kamikatsu that has about 1500 residents and has a cooperative waste management system where they recycle everything into one of 45 categories and I really want to know what each of those categories is but no website or video I can find lists them. I’d travel to their learning center in person if it wasn’t literally on the other side of the planet from where I am.. Here’s the website! if anyone has read or heard about them please let me know!
Thinking about the recycling plastic shit, how much plastic would u say is actually recyclable? This project kind of seems like it would be more useful for a community rather than one person...
Yeah even just investment-wise it seems you'd need at least 3-4 working class salaries set aside for a few months (not being spent on essentials/rent, say if you live w your parents like me lol) to b able to set it all up, but it seems if you & some friends can scrounge together $5-10k you can get smth really unique & worthwhile off the ground, and gain a whole lot of industrial-level skills while you're at it. (Could prob get a small one off the ground for <2k if you have the space)
But yeah, they're marketing it towards small community-centered workplaces, which if you can start up as a worker-owned coop from the get-go, the exploitation is ~just~ from the market & not a boss.
They also seem to be doing a global platform thing where workspaces of different types can coordinate with one another so u don't have to do all the steps in the production process when you're just starting out.
They have videos on what kinds of plastic you can use like this one, or this one, but short story: most any plastics that you throw in the recycling bin, not "thermoset" plastics like bowling balls or polyeurathane where they don't melt, you should separate by category (the #1-#7 in the little ♻️ logo in the US) before trying to melt - can be done before or after shredding, tho usually easier before. Also it's important to make sure the plastic is clean, so you don't get who-knows-what making its way thru your process.
The different kinds of plastic have different material properties & are more-or-less finicky to work with, but they can all be reused if you know what you're doing. Notably PVC (plumbing pipes & vinyl sheets) produces incredibly cancerous vapors (also why you don't laser cut them!), so unless you really know what ur doing prob stay away from like that & PA. This vid has more abt safety!
I'm still learning but I've already binged most of the vids, so feel free to ask if you have more Qs! 🤗
Gezien op DDW17: Precious Plastic, het prijswinnende ontwerp van Dave Hakkens. Het betreft een open source productielijn om zelf plastic voorwerpen te maken van bestaande plastic voorwerpen. Met het online platform maakt Dave er een wereldwijde beweging van. Community Plastics van Frans Taminiau is een vergelijkbaar plastic recycle project, met een voorlopig meer bescheiden ambitie op lokaal Rotterdams niveau.
Beide zijn projecten om plastic producten te maken met plastic verpakkingsmateriaal als voorname bron. Dat worden vaak producten die niet per se van plastic hoeven te zijn. Dat wil je meestal liever niet zelfs. Mooie initiatieven, maar de grote slag tegen de plastic soup wordt pas gemaakt als de verpakkingsindustrie veel meer met gerecycled plastic moet gaan werken. Nieuw plastic is nu alleen nog te goedkoop om dat voor elkaar te krijgen.
Animatique du le stop motion Precious Plastique pour la FAB LAB du lycée
(La version finale du projet n'a pas pu être finalisée, car j'ai été malade 10 jours sur la fin des vacances de février, juste avant la finalisation du Tumblr. )
J'ai quand même réalisé l'animation rapidement, mais le rendu est raté car je n'ai pas pu prendre le temps d'être rigoureuse. J'ai gardé seulement l'expérimentation que j'avais faite pour les portes ouvertes.
J'avais tout préparé pour faire ce projet au mieux, mais malheureusement, ça n'a pas pu aboutir. Cependant, ce que j'ai fabriqué et appris me servira certainement pour un prochain projet.
ok, so i wanted to do the follow up to my first precious plastic post in an amazing way, written super well, in perfect english etc etc etc but i realized that i really wanted to talk about it as a project because i think it's really cool and i also realized that i'm not a journalist or whatever and this is a tumblr post so i can write however i want because there are no expectations yuhu so here i come
Precious Plastic:
as i have already mentioned it is a project to increase plastic recycling. i don't know how to put it well into words so here are some of the best videos that explain what they do:
This is the launch video for the version 4 of their machines. Basically, the project started in 2013 with Dave Hakkens form the Netherlands designing some machines to recycle plastic "at home" - what i mean is that they're pretty affordable and can be operated by one person meaning that anyone with a relatively small investment can set up a small workshop where they make their own recycled products. The machines were upgraded many times and the last version was version 4, that was announced at the end of 2020.
This one is the video they made for their 10 years anniversary. It contains a better recap of their history (what i just wrote about) and it's a nice introduction to their work i'd say.
BUT! -you will ask me- what do they have that is special? we hear about plastic recycling all the time. why do you think they are worth our attention?? why do you put the solarpunk tag when talking about them?
i think it's the principles and the values that guide the project that make it different, and this is shown in the best part of the precious plastic designs: they are totally OPEN SOURCE!
this means that all of the work that they did is up on the internet, accessible to everybody, FOR FREE! and well to make it pretty simple free stuff is the opposite of capitalism.
for example, this is the link with all the instructions to build a plastic shredder:
and no, it's not just the designs. they also made tutorials and clear instructions, plus they have info on how to create a business, and a lot more.
this is also a project that is helped by the members of the community themselves, the small recyclers (i don't know how it is called, maybe bottom-up participation???): on the community page, anybody can share how they built their own machines, or share a new mould they deigned for a product. The knowledge is shared by everybody, for everybody.
for the casual enjoyers/supporters there is a discord community:
https://discord.com/invite/wMJHykrk4k
and obviously the youtube channel, where they post weekly videos visiting all of the workshops around the world (the last ones were in italy, but they visited workshops in south and central america, in kenya, in indonesia, and many other places).
https://www.youtube.com/@Precious_Plastic
Realistically, i personally do not believe that small sale recycling can be the final solution to the plastic pollution problem. I haven't fully elaborated an opinion on it, but in general i think that the solution would come by starting to consider plastic waste as a resource, almost like a prime source, and ditch oil completely, so that we can keep using plastic where it is necessary (sanitary field for hygene, other examples don't come to mind) but using only recycled one (is it possible? i should educate myself a bit more and then i'll tell you), and this change has to happen on a big industrial level.
But you know what i also think? this kind of change can happen only if we perceive recycled plastic as a valuable material, as the normal kind of plastic, and that's precisely what Precious Plastic does. by making the recycling accessible and making it a tangible experience (there are TONS of educational project that were born from their machines), it creates a virtuous cycle in which we consider recycling the norm, and using virgin plastic the weird thing.
So yeah, i think that's it for today. obviously the precious plastic team is amazing in any possible way aand is part of a bigger project that tackles creating a sustainable world in general called one army (a big lovely peaceful solidal community), and project kamp is another of their cool things they are doing, but i'll talk about that another time. i hope this was a readable post and that it made sense. cheers!
