Precious Plastic
Formation2013 (2013)
FounderDave Hakkens
Location
Region
Worldwide
Websitepreciousplastic.com

Precious Plastic is an open hardware plastic recycling project and is a type of open source digital commons project. The project was started in 2013 by Dave Hakkens and is now in its fourth iteration. It relies on a series of machines and tools which grind, melt, and inject recycled plastic, allowing for the creation of new products out of recycled plastic on a small scale.

History

In 2012, Dave Hakkens started working on Precious Plastic as a part of his studies at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.[1] The project was released in 2013 as Version 1.0.[1]

The work on version 2 was started in 2015[1] and was released in March 2016.[1][2] In 2016, Precious Plastic also created a marketplace called Bazar for selling machines and products targeted to DIY designers to recycle plastic.[3]

The team started working on version 3.0 from early 2017 and was launched in October 2017.[1]

In May 2018, Precious Plastic received the Famae award of €300,000 to further develop the project.[4] The city of Eindhoven also provided them a big workspace free of charge.[4] In October 2018, Precious Plastic project officially opened its doors at the VDMA building in Eindhoven.[5] The work on Version 4.0 was started in September 2018.[6][1]

In 2019 Hakkens and Precious Plastic were involved in disagreement over whether to burn or recycle plastics collected from the oceans.[7]

The version 4, which includes business models and starter kits for creating recycling systems, was announced in January 2020.[6][1]

In December 2020, One Army was launched as an umbrella organization for a growing collection of projects including Precious Plastic, Project Kamp, PhoneBloks, Fixing Fashion, and Story Hopper.[8][9]

Fixing Fashion was launched in March 2021.[10][11]

Description

A recycled plastic carabiner made with Precious Plastic machinery
A recycled plastic carabiner made with Precious Plastic machinery by Parley for the Oceans

Precious Plastic is an open hardware plastic recycling project and is a type of open source digital commons project.[12] It relies on a series of machines and tools which grind, melt, and inject recycled plastic, allowing for the creation of new products out of recycled plastic on a small scale.[13] The project allows individual consumers to set up "their own miniature recycling company".[14]

The project is composed of more than 40,000 people[15] in over 400 work spaces, either remotely or on site in the Netherlands.[16][17][3] All the information produced by the project such as codes, drawings, and source materials are available for free online under the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike International 4.0 license.[12]

Precious Plastic Fiji was formed in 2017 as a NGO dedicated to eliminating plastic waste.[18]

In 2018 after a workshop in China, a company, Plastplan, grew out of the Precious Plastic project in Iceland to promote an alternative to shipping plastic to Sweden to be burned for electricity.[19][20]

In Hawaii in 2019, Puna Precious Plastic, with more than 1,000 members as a part of the Precious Plastic worldwide movement, collected about 1,000 pounds, which it planned to sort, shred and melt into plastic bricks and lumber for construction.[21][22][23]

In Thailand, Precious Plastic Bangkok collects plastic bottle caps to shred, melt, and reshape into new products, including monk's robes.[24][25]

With a grant from Dane County Arts and partnered with Community GroundWorks, the nonprofit that oversees Troy Kids’ Garden, and hackerspace Sector 67, a branch of Precious Plastic was launched in Madison, Wisconsin.[26]

In September 2021, One Army announced a "Verified" Precious Plastic workspaces program to give recognition to "high quality recycling work". Many locations around the world were listed.[27]

University involvement

In 2018, a group called Precious Plastic Texas was formed by students at the University of Texas after learning about what was being done in Thailand.[28] In 2019 students in the Environmental Fellows Program's gateway seminar at DePauw University in Indiana began work on a Precious Plastic project, and received funding from the Joseph and Carol Danks Centers Council Fund for Multidisciplinary Projects. The project will continue in a gateway seminar and three art classes, and they may add an off-campus trip to a Precious Plastic site.[29] In Australia, UNSW business school students, working closely with Precious Plastic, won the 2019 Big Idea competition in the postgraduate category with their start-up idea called Closed Loop – a local-level plastic waste recycling business.[30] Engineering students at the Monash University chapter created a Precious Plastic one-metre cube portable recycling machine to transport to events for display.[31]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Precious Plastic History". preciousplastic.com. Retrieved 2020-01-10.
  2. ↑ "Dave Hakkens updates Precious Plastics recycling machines". Dezeen. 2016-04-14. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  3. 1 2 Peters, Adele (2017-10-30). "These DIY Machines Let Anyone Recycle Plastic Into New Products". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  4. 1 2 "Precious Plastic Version 4 Team". preciousplastic.com. Retrieved 2020-01-10.
  5. ↑ Diana (2018-10-09). "Precious Plastic: from Eindhoven to the World". Eindhoven News. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  6. 1 2 Precious Plastic 4 - Fully explained, retrieved 2020-01-10
  7. ↑ "Plastic collected by The Ocean Cleanup will be burned to generate electricity". Dezeen. 2019-08-19. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  8. ↑ "Say hi to One Army". onearmy.earth. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  9. ↑ "One Army for the Planet". onearmy.earth. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  10. ↑ "The problem with fashion in 2021". onearmy.earth. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  11. ↑ "Fashion fixes are revolutionizing popular trends - Times of India". The Times of India. 13 June 2021. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  12. 1 2 "Precious Plastic is Open Source". preciousplastic.com. Retrieved 2020-01-10.
  13. ↑ Charter, Martin (2018-08-06). Designing for the Circular Economy. Routledge. p. 31. ISBN 978-1-351-62390-2.
  14. ↑ Roscam Abbing, Michiel (2019-04-04). Plastic Soup: An Atlas of Ocean Pollution. Island Press. ISBN 978-1-64283-009-5.
  15. ↑ Sharman, Linda (2019-12-05). "Making a difference, one lid at a time". Farm Weekly. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  16. ↑ Lenton, Dominic (2019-03-12). "Community recycling project helps reuse and rejuvenate plastic waste". eandt.theiet.org. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  17. ↑ "Precious Plastic Wants You to Build Your Own Plastics Recycling Center". HowStuffWorks. 2016-05-02. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  18. ↑ Ilaitia Ravuwai, Suva (March 14, 2019). "Precious Plastic Fiji To Set-Up Recycling Hubs For Plastics". Fiji Sun. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  19. ↑ "The Precious Plastic Initiative Aims To Change An Unhealthy Relationship". The Reykjavik Grapevine. 2018-09-20. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  20. ↑ "We would like to get rid of the idea of single-use plastic". Iceland Review. 2019-06-29. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  21. ↑ Cook Lauer, Nancy (2019-11-01). "Recycling groups, projects, cropping up as county reduces recycling". Hawaii Tribune-Herald. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  22. ↑ "2019: The Year in Review". West Hawaii Today. 2020-01-01. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  23. ↑ Burnett, John (2020-01-01). "Big Island's top 10 stories include the standoff on Maunakea, ongoing lava recovery efforts, recycling woes". Hawaii Tribune-Herald. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  24. ↑ Thaitrakulpanich, Asaree (2019-05-13). "Precious Plastic: Recycling Bangkok One Bottle Cap At A Time". Khaosod English. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  25. ↑ Thaitrakulpanich, Asaree (2019-12-20). "6 Times in 2019 Thais and Expats Stood Up for the Environment". Khaosod English. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  26. ↑ Krug, Erica (2019-09-26). "Just one word: Plastics". Isthmus | Madison, Wisconsin. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  27. ↑ "Meet the first Precious Plastic Verified workspaces". onearmy.earth. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
  28. ↑ Dong, Mengyuan (October 7, 2018). "UT seniors launching new organization, fighting against plastic pollution - The Daily Texan". www.dailytexanonline.com. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  29. ↑ Dieter, Mary (July 23, 2019). "Students provide a local answer to worldwide plastic pollution". DePauw University. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  30. ↑ Lo, Dawn (2019-12-16). "A big idea for public recycling". UNSW Newsroom. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  31. ↑ Kirkham, Rochelle (2019-03-11). "Waste plastic becomes a resource with this portable recycling machine". The Courier. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
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