Fortunately, I grew up during a strong push for recycling and often look for the proper bin for different refuse. Despite this early PSA education, our standard production and consumption hinder much of the spirit behind the recycling effort. Instead of depending on larger organizations to do all the heavy lifting, Dave Hakkens decided to put his ingenuity to use and devise a homemade method for recycling plastic under the project banner Precious Plastic.
As of now, Precious Plastic has three methods for repurposing and recycling plastic, and it is based on Dave’s immediate community. One of the methods, extrusion, promises to provide filament for 3D printers. It already successfully compresses and pushes out what was once flakes of shredded bottles and other objects into strings of plastic through a press and heated tube with a rotating screw. Another method producing a vase in the sample video is a rotating oven at 360 degrees (apparently cookies and plastic bake at the same temperature). Finally, there is the injection model. The project is still in development stage, but likely to see immediate use creating colorful common objects. This is recycling at its most immediate and practical and may have a homebrewed influence on private 3D printing.
Embodying the spirit of recycling, Precious Plastic provides blueprints for its manifestations and videos displaying the impetus and execution of the project. Juxtaposed with the calculated large-scale business model that promotes a paltry 10% recycled production rate, Precious Plastics offers an exciting model, something that would not only repurpose plastics, but foster community exchange on a smaller and more intimate level. Once the extrusion model perfects its operation, filament could be produced by the plastic previously discarded or thrown into a bin with hopes of recycling. This new model does more than close the loop, it simplifies the circle while simultaneously opening the gates for myriad objects produced at whim, not forced upon us by a standard model of consumption. As a child, this is how I envisioned recycling, and wondered why it seemed so complicated and cost deficient as I aged. Luckily Dave and his Precious Plastics responded.
