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Start Collaborating Boost Plastic Recycling
Some Ideas for a Small Plastics Recycling Business
Based on the idea above I have an editable spreadsheet designed for any small business which wants to incorporate reusing plastics and other common waste products into its business model. You can find it here. Just download and make changes.
First: I think trying to repurpose plastics as their original single use intent is most efficient when possible. Such as: resealable plastic bags for food could be repurposed for non-food products. Getting large businesses such as Trader Joes to minimize their labeling would really help. Many plastic food and liquid containers are also quite useful beyond their single use intent.
I'm guessing to work on a small scale, plastic injection molds and 3d plastic printers would have to be used to produce high value products because of the low volume output with such technology. As such; the production output would require high value design work. Because such design work is not always affordable to small businesses it would be best if it could be shared by many businesses with the shared goal of plastic waste reduction.
These DIY Machines Let Anyone Recycle Plastic Into New Products
The majority of the 300 million tons of plastic produced every year isn’t recycled, and recycling that does happen typically happens at an industrial scale in factories using equipment that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. But a growing number of designers are using a set of open-source, easy-to-build tools to recycle plastic and manufacture new plastic products on their own.
“We want to make small-scale plastic recycling accessible to everyone, as this can have an exponential effect on the amount of plastic recycled–eventually reducing the demand for new virgin plastic–and educate millions of people on plastic, plastic recycling, and how to handle it before it ends up in the environment,” says Dave Hakkens, the Dutch founder of Precious Plastic, an organization that designed the machines now in use by the designers in Thailand and the Ukraine, and more than 200 others.
One set of instructions explains how to build a low-cost machine that shreds plastic into flakes. Another modular machine extrudes plastic that can be used for 3D printing; an injection machine and a compression machine can form plastic into molds. A series of videos explain how to build the machines using basic materials and universal parts.
