Glad to see more innovation in plastic recycling. Reminds me of this interview about making medical devices from recycled plastic in Gaza[0]:
“Let’s talk about how your medical devices are printed on the ground in Gaza. 3D printers use plastic to create objects. Where do you get the plastic?
It’s recycled ABS plastic. Gaza actually has a 100 percent recycle rate because no plastic is allowed in.
Really?
Yeah, almost everybody’s plumbing in Gaza is made out of recycled plastic. It’s really quite wild. For the printers, we use recycled ABS and we mix in as much virgin plastic as we can get because you always need some virgin plastic — there’s no such thing as 100 percent recycled plastic — but sometimes it’s not very much.
Where do you get the ABS from? I’m imagining a bunch of plastic bottles.
You’re halfway there. Plastic bottles are made out of a material called PET. We don’t use PET; we use ABS, which is the plastic that’s in Lego pieces. It’s also in chairs and tables, picnic tables, shit like that. What happens is: you take those plastic parts, you grind them down, you wash them and dry them. Then you melt them and extrude them into spools of “filament,” which is what 3D printers use to make things...“
Article goes on to explain some of the machinery people are using.
“Let’s talk about how your medical devices are printed on the ground in Gaza. 3D printers use plastic to create objects. Where do you get the plastic?
It’s recycled ABS plastic. Gaza actually has a 100 percent recycle rate because no plastic is allowed in.
Really?
Yeah, almost everybody’s plumbing in Gaza is made out of recycled plastic. It’s really quite wild. For the printers, we use recycled ABS and we mix in as much virgin plastic as we can get because you always need some virgin plastic — there’s no such thing as 100 percent recycled plastic — but sometimes it’s not very much.
Where do you get the ABS from? I’m imagining a bunch of plastic bottles.
You’re halfway there. Plastic bottles are made out of a material called PET. We don’t use PET; we use ABS, which is the plastic that’s in Lego pieces. It’s also in chairs and tables, picnic tables, shit like that. What happens is: you take those plastic parts, you grind them down, you wash them and dry them. Then you melt them and extrude them into spools of “filament,” which is what 3D printers use to make things...“
Article goes on to explain some of the machinery people are using.
[0] from https://logicmag.io/bodies/tarek-loubani-on-3d-printing-in-g...