Innovation doesn't always require billion-dollar labs. It can also begin with a Dutch student who decides to share his designs for free. In 2014, Dave Hakkens, then studying at the Eindhoven Design Academy, released his design for a plastic recycling machine to the world for free, aiming to make plastic recycling available to local communities by lowering the technological threshold.
That simple act of generosity has evolved into Precious Plastic, now a global community of over 2,000 registered plastic recycling initiatives across 56 countries. The machines can be purchased, but more importantly, they can be replicated and improved upon using off-the-shelf materials.
The results are impressive. Around 1400 tonnes were recycled by the Precious Plastic community in one year. In Singapore, Plastify turns medical packaging waste into official F1 Grand Prix merchandise. In Turin, Italy, Plastiz transforms everything from old traffic lights to coffee pods into sheets for architecture projects. And in war-torn Ukraine, No Waste Ukraine works to replace "old Soviet-era shame, when recycling was seen as a sign of poverty, with a new sense of pride and identity."
Like the crooked man who lived in a crooked house, it was the characterful, not to say skew-whiff, nature of the house that first drew him there: ‘It works quite well with the higgledy-piggledy of my collecting.’
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