https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYrl07crIHg

Contents


Overview


Location: Mauritius

Duration stay: 1 Month

Budget: 4.000 euro

Participants: 7 volunteers

Machines: Shredder + Injection machine

Visits: 1

The exact location of the workspace!

The exact location of the workspace!

🏝Background


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In February 2020 I packed my bags and traveled down to Mauritius to meet with Valery. Valery had gotten a sponsorship from the International Olympic Committee and was super eager to setup a plastic recycling workspace in Mauritius.

Mauritius has one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen.😎 It is amazing to stay at the beach for days, but it is also in danger. From all sides plastic is flowing in and ending up in-between the coral and on the beaches themselves. Valery organizes beach cleanups but once the plastic is collected, the only option was the landfill.

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On the one hand, kilograms of plastic are saved from the ocean, on the other hand, the plastic is moved to the second worst place, the landfill. After a quick online search Valery found Precious Plastic, the place where plastic recycling is made simple, for anyone!

Due to the limited technical knowledge of Valery himself, he assembled a team of volunteers to setup such a workspace. In Mauritius gathering people for this topic is not difficult, all it took was just one Facebook post and the replies came rollling in. 💪

To help them and to coordinate this whole process, I joined! In the years that I'm now involved with precious plastic I gathered quite some knowledge and have build various machines, this makes it easy to setup the workspace and guide the team in using and maintaining the machines.

The problem, plastic everywhere 😔

The problem, plastic everywhere 😔

🏗The Build


⏳Time

The time frame to setup this workspace was around one month, within this month we needed to transform a regular house into a workspace, build the Shredder and Injection machine, and lay down the surrounding infrastructure to turn plastic trash into valuable new products

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Week 1: Gathering parts (Finding a motor, construction metal and electrical components)

Week 2: Building machines & workspace (Welding the frames, making shelves)

Week 3: Finishing machines (Assembling the machines, painting the workspace)