One common material found throughout the world, and often discarded, is plastic.
Dutch designer Dave Hakkens wants to help clean up the world by recycling all that plastic into new products, and he wants to make it accessible for everyone everywhere to be able to do so.
His idea was to design four machines, that you can build yourself from low cost materials that are easily available, through plans available on the website – Precious Plastic.
There are four machines you can build, one to shred the plastic, one to extrude the plastic, one to inject the plastic, and one to compress the plastic.
By making the plans for these machines available to everyone, the designer wants people to start their own little factory, allowing people to create new things from plastic, and at the same time clean up their neighborhood.
Here is the shredder in action, making chips for the other machines to work with.
Here you can see how the melted plastic is extruded in a cord-like form from the extrusion machine.
The plastic can be extruded and wrapped onto a spool to be used for weaving or for another use.
The plastic can also be injected straight into moulds to create objects.
Here are some of the test products they created.
The aim is to make these machines available for everyone, and they want help sharing the idea, so people in countries where discarded plastic is abundant can find out about it.
So watch the video below to find out more, or you can visit the website – here.