Introduction

Nice to meet you!

Precious Plastic

Hey, we are Precious Plastic. Nice one! We are a bunch of guys (and a few girls here and there) working together to find ways to work with plastic waste. By now plastic has become a threat to entire ecosystems and societies. It is deteriorating our planet and people’s lives. It is a problem. A material made to last hundreds of years that is only used for minutes, a fraction of its possible lifespan, and quickly discarded.

All plastic laying around you is a resource, not waste. A material with great potentials, mostly intact qualities and a sea of opportunities waiting to be discovered. If treated correctly, this resource can become the beginning of something new. For you, society and the planet at large. This resource, laying around everywhere, can become a source of income or an educational tool for your community.

At Precious Plastic we want to show the world the incredible opportunities of plastic waste in order to eliminate plastic pollution, reducing the demand for new virgin plastic and closing its materials loop while creating better livelihoods for people around the world. Precious Plastic is, above all, a cultural tool to change the way society perceives plastic.

We have created machines, documentation, video tutorials, campaigns and a platform to empower people across the planet to start working with plastic waste locally while trying to decentralise and localise plastic recycling technologies, infrastructures and knowledge by providing opensource designs for machines, moulds and consumer products.

We share everything open source for anyone to benefit from. This means that all the knowledge, know-how, processes, methodologies and tools are available online, for free at all times. This open source philosophy is at the core of the project and shapes most decisions within the team. We believe that collaboration is stronger than competition and that the plastic problem can only be solved collectively.

Precious Plastic machines are built to enable anyone to work with plastic waste and are designed to be as inclusive and accessible as possible. They are made from basic materials, are very affordable and easy to build around the world. Their simplicity allows effective maintenance and easy repair. The machines are also modular so they can be adapted to different contexts and needs.

Precious Plastic is built upon a strong international community of people working together to find solutions to plastic pollution. The community meets online on Dave Hakkens’ (our founder) forums to discuss, inspire and help each other find answers to the many questions still open. Discussions range from suggestions and ideas, machine development, creations and research about plastic. If you cannot find the answer to your questions in this booklet, the forum is the place to go.

The manual

This booklet you’re holding in your hands should be used as a manual to run a Precious Plastic Workspace- a small scale recycling factory to process plastic waste in meaningful ways. It will help you getting started and should be used as a reference point when lost or stuck with problems. You will find information, know-how, best practices, links, troubleshooting and training material on Precious Plastic processes and machines as well as useful insights about the world of plastic at large.

This publication should be used as a tool to access useful information about plastic, Precious Plastic machines and methodologies. This should not be intended as the only place to direct your search for answers about plastic, it should instead serve as the starting point for further personal research on both the digital and real world.

Good luck !

Disclaimer

Plastic recycling is a complicated world, closed off behind big walls of corporate interests and intellectual property. This makes it difficult for outsiders or the general public to tap into this. We do our very best to provide the most complete and satisfactory solutions to deal with plastic pollution but we’re also aware that we do not have all the answers, yet. We move forward step by step, facing each new challenge as it comes with ever more confidence that a solution to plastic waste is possible. Hopefully, some answers will come from you too.