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from the saving-the-world-one-bottle-at-a-time dept.
Within just a few generations, plastic has already taken over the world, and while this material enabled a revolution in manufacturing and design, plastic has also managed to become one of the biggest menaces on the planet, thanks to its convenience and ease of production. And although commercial collection and recycling of plastics is getting better and more accessible, in many areas plastics end up in the dump instead the recycling facility, essentially burying this resource, which could be used to great effect if only the machinery were available to do so.
A few years ago, Kimberly wrote about the efforts of Dave Hakkens, who created a series of machines intended to put plastic recycling into the hands of the people. His Precious Plastics project promised free and open source blueprints, plans, and instructions for building these plastics recycling machines, which included a shredder, an extruding machine, an injection device, and a compression machine, and that information is now available on the website for anyone to download and put to work.
[...] The full set of Precious Plastic V2.0 information, which includes the CAD files and blueprints as well as posters, images, and instructions, is available as a free download under an open-source license, and detailed videos are available on the website to guide people through the process.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jelizondo on Friday November 04 2016, @04:23PM
The idea is great but:
A good step forward, but the machines need to be able to handle serious loads (i.e. at least a couple of tons per day) and the process of separation and cleaning need to be properly addresed in order to make money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @04:45PM
Who said anything about making money? It would be profitable in some poorer countries, and the general idea is more about reducing waste than making competitive products.