What we primarily want to achieve with this blog is to raise awareness of modern plastic consumption and its consequences on our lives and nature. Previously, Sophie has written a journal for a week about her self-experiment where she didn’t consume food that was packaged in plastics, as you can see here. We are also going to upload soon an interview with Marie Delaperrière, one of the Zero Waste pioneers in Germany. But for today, I am going to start with referring to great websites, documentaries and books on that topic.
www.preciousplastic.com
Today’s reference is a website called “preciousplastic.com” which I stumbled upon one time of mindless scrolling along Facebook. Firstly, it seemed rather unremarkable, but a friend posted it who never post anything. Then after clicking on it and watching the 5 min video, it seemed very remarkable, indeed.
I wouldn’t want to spend my holidays there.
Simply put, it’s a website on teaching you how you can recycle plastics yourself. Cool point – but even cooler: this website provides free blueprints and video tutorials on how to build plastic recycling machines yourself! You heard correctly, you can have your own recycling center in your neighbourhood and all you need is some little help from this website. I am a fan of grassroots movement and actively shaping culture, so I was instantly sold on this idea.
A young Dutch guy called Dave Hakkens came with this idea for his graduation project. His operation is that of a neat entrepreneur –he starts with a problem: Plastics damage various habitats and pollute beaches and vast areas of forests, jungles, dunes, the sky, air – in short, our planet. And as if it isn’t bad enough that it sucks to look at rubbish strewn beaches, it also kills animals.
Cool guy
Too big of a problem you think? He doesn’t. Whenever politics fail at operating sensibly, men must take matters into their own hand. Hakkens and his team believe we, ourselves, have to change on how we deal with waste and that this will minimize the damage we inflict upon our environment. They have researched on materials that can be found everywhere where people live en masse together, and they have designed blueprints for machines made out of them which are quite easy to replicate and to operate. These machines have different functions how they process the plastics, either it be by
molding or by shredding it.
You can have them in your living room.
Additionally, they teach you what you need to know about plastics. Different plastics have different functions and different melting points etc etc. I never thought about it, but knowing about materials and to generally deal with things that surround you, at least to me, is eye-opening and therefore rewarding. There are also many ideas and applications how you can produce new stuff out of recycled plastics. Keywords: Upcycling and creativity.
Be creative, the possibilities are endless!
Why I want you to appreciate Hakkens idea is, because he gives you knowledge, so you can experience yourself as a creator instead of just a consumer that has to deal somehow with the curse of plastics. With some help from these machines you can create new things out of waste, sell it if you want to, or at least just create a workshop in your neighborhood that is making plastic recycling a real thing and becoming active in the battle against pollution.
written by Temur Mehr
No comments:
Post a Comment