Every year humanity produces more than 300 million tonnes of plastic, of which only 10% is recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, cremated, or worse, in nature. To fight against this pollution, Dave Hakkens had an idea: to design machines to turn these plastic waste into useful objects and distribute their plans on the net for free. With this new project called Precious Plastic, this Dutch designer, already known for his Phonebloks modular phone, intends to continue fighting for a more resource-efficient world, while generating jobs. NO REQUIRED SKILLS "It's amazing to find so much plastic in nature, because it's a valuable material that can be easily reused," says Hakkens. Still, it is necessary to have the right tools at hand. Machines exist, certainly, but, very expensive and ultra-technical, they were hitherto reserved for the industry. "The main difficulty was to design machines that everyone can build with recycled materials wherever he lives in the world, and this without any technical skills or complex tools," says the designer.
