 Yo Luis, over here. Hey, I'm Mattia and welcome to Mantre News number 48. So this month I'm live from Porto in Portugal, the city of Porto, the wine, many bridges. One, two, three, four and there's a fifth one behind the hill. And this bridge here was made by Eiffel, the same guy of the Paris Tower. Really, really beautiful tile works. Nice. And the city of endless empty buildings. Empty, empty, empty, empty, empty, empty. Empty, empty, empty, empty, the whole thing. And this city very much reminds me of Berlin 15 years ago, where globalization left behind a big vacuum. A vacuum that was quickly filled by artists and creatives with sheer outstanding creativity. And this community garden behind me is a very good example of this. Back in March, when COVID first hit, the locals reclaimed these old ruins and transformed it into a very nice garden where people and nature can thrive together. And it's just a very nice place to be. Alright, enough with Porto. Now let's dive into the One Army News. So welcome to the first Mantre News of 2021. And on top of buying some fancy plants at the local store, we decided to spice things up a bit and give Dave a little bit of a break. So from now on, the Mantre News will be presented by either me, Joseph, Kat or Dave. So one of us each month. Empty, empty, empty, empty, empty, empty. Last few months, we were sharing with you some nice movies and documentaries to watch. However, I'm not that much of a movie kind of guy. I'm more into books. And let me tell you that in 2020, I had plenty of time to read books. So here are some of my favorites. So first is Breathe by James Nester. And as you can guess from the title, it's a book about breathing and how fundamental and important that is to a well-functioning body and mind. Second is Company of One by Paul Jarvis. And Paul is really one of my favorite content creators on the web. And in this book, it stresses the importance of small, medium businesses or companies of one into this globalized world that we are living in. Third is Next Nature by Kurt Mansford. And this is very much a book that will change dramatically the way that you look at nature, humans and technology. Fourth is another round on the merry-go-round by Tiziano Terzani. And this is a very beautiful journey where he basically discovered that he has cancer and goes into different cultures and different medicine to sort of see how they look at this problem and how they offer solutions. Fifth is Coronation by Charles Eisenstein. And this is not a book, it's more of a long essay. And it was published back in March. And it was really looking at the coronavirus pandemic from many different angles. And it really provides some fresh, bright perspectives on the topic. And last, Digital Minimalism by Carl Neuport. And I just finished a release book this morning actually. And it's a book about sort of reclaiming the role that technology has in our lives. And believe it or not, I also have a documentary to share with you guys. It's called Living the Present. And it's basically a journey of this guy that goes around the world to find and understand and discover different understanding of what spirituality is, what inner work is, what the self and the ego. It's very much an interesting sort of pool of knowledge to use on your day-to-day. I would very much highly recommend you watching it. But I still believe that books are way, way cooler. Okay, now time for the actual news. Let's begin with one army. Empty, empty, empty. Last month, as you might have noticed, we released a new website and the new Patreon page. The switch went kind of smooth. We had about 10,000 visitors in the first month and 70 new patrons. Half of which were part of the $1 pledge, which is really, really amazing because it enables more and more people to join the growing global army. And a special, special thanks goes to Jin Ming from Korea. He reached out on Patreon to ask a few questions about taxes and he left by doubling his pledge to $100 per month. And he's joining Gianna and Krea Kregi, also donating $100 per month. And this is really incredible because, well, first of all, it's a lot of money and it really helped us to plan in the future and to really reinvest more money into these projects. And also beyond the money side of things on a human level, it really gives us the strength to keep on doing what we do on a daily basis. Throughout January, we also published a couple of articles on our website. Why is about the 11 best precious plastic workspaces out there? And it's really a list of the people that are smashing it the most in the precious plastic world. And then we also published an article and a video about what it is like to live as a monk in a Krishna temple. And this is part of a Project Camp series where we go and learn from different communities around the world what it means to live together. And in January, we also had our first ever one-army livestream. And it was a super nice, cozy experience where we could connect with the community and provide direct feedback on that project. Next, Project Camp. Not very much is happening there beyond raining a lot. And that's very much the plan with it. We just want to take the time to observe and learn about the land, about the season, about the soil, about the forest. So very little is going to happen there in 2021. And last month, after five absolutely incredible years living in my yellow van, I took it to its final destination, Project Camp. I originally decided to go and live in a van because I really wanted to dedicate 100% of my life to work on precious plastic. That was about 2015. And at that time precious plastic had very little money, I mean just zero money. So I was left with having to cut costs as much as possible. So I ended up buying this very cheap van, renovating it as good as I could, and then I started living in it. And little did I know that in the next, in the following five years, I've experienced some of the most amazing adventures that I could possibly imagine. And I even got married in it. It's been a very tough decision to take it off the road, but it had to be done. And I'm going to try and take it as a non-attachment exercise. Plus it was in the original Project Camp drawing, so I really had no options there. And it's now there providing Dave with some extra solar capacity and some extra room to live in this surprisingly cold winter in Portugal. Oh, and before we move on, we just created a new Project Camp Instagram account where we're going to be publishing more news, stories and updates in the upcoming weeks. So make sure to follow. Empty, empty, empty, empty, empty. And last but definitely not least, our very dear precious plastic. So the team in France is working full-time to deliver the last few starter kits and create very valuable how-tos for the community. Meanwhile, the workspace search is full-on. Thanks to Leo from VivaLab, last week we went in the university area to check out this very big, massive and beautiful space. But at the same time, we're still also looking in Germany, in France, in the Netherlands, in Denmark. And I'm very hopeful that we're going to be able to give you some good news in the next few months. And this month I would like to highlight the excellent work of our friends at Taler Esferica. You might remember them for the precious plastic sunglasses that they've been developing now for four or five years. I even went to visit them in their workspace in Barcelona a few years back. Taler Esferica. Hello, hello. Hello, how are you? How's it going, guys? But now, finally, after many years of very hard work, everything seems to be coming together. So they've been setting their slick sunglasses on the bazaar for a while now. But recently they also started to selling the molds to make those sunglasses on the bazaar. And even more recently, in January, they made a how-to on how to make their sunglasses so that more people around the world can make them. And finally, they are working on a distributed production model that would enable them to produce the sunglasses all around the world. And we really, really hope to see more precious plastic recycled sunglasses popping up around the world. And we very much want to thank you guys at Taler Esferica to keep on working on precious plastic year in, year on, really pushing the limits of what can be done with plastic recycling. Okay, so now let's shift our focus towards the how-tos. This month we had six how-tos. So for those of you who don't know, how-tos are step-by-step guides that anyone out there can make to tell the world how they recycle plastic. It can be about a new machine hack. It can be a new product. It can be a new way of collecting plastic. And these are incredibly useful knowledge for the community out there, because this big plastic pollution problem needs to be tackled from many different angles and with many different interpretations depending on the context. Okay, so this month we had a clipboard from Plus Makers. How to design a mold from Taler Esferica. How to make a bike pedal by Adrien. And this is really, really nice how-to because it's a classic example of one of those products that could easily be made from recycled plastic, but it's not for some reasons. And it's also used in a very low-tech mold, which is always a plus. Then we had how-to-dry materials from KitTech. And these guys at KitTech, they've been really pushing out very useful information and how-to's in the last months. So I wanted to thank you guys for your amazing work and knowledge that you bring back into the community. Then we had how-to-make beam patterns by Youp. And this really shows the incredible preciousness and value of recycled plastic when it's treated in a certain way. And last but definitely not least, the how-to from our hands on how-to-make a 1.5 meter sheet press. And this is sort of a hack on the original sheet press. And you can expect more how-to coming from us in the next few months. So before we move on, I really want to stress how if you are working on precious plastic, if you are experimenting and pushing the limits of plastic recycling, how crucially it is that you document your work and that you share it back with the community. So that we can all move forward together and offer better solutions to tackle the plastic waste problem. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. The whole thing is empty. And that one too. And last I finally wanted to share with you some precious plastic gems that we found around the web. First I would like to start by a hack from the beginning, which is the Bicycle Shredder. And these hacks, they look really, really beautiful and fun and playful. And they are perfect for workshops, as they are very engaging and people just simply love them. However, we are not fully sure about the efficiency of them. Already three or four years ago, precious plastic Shanghai developed their own version of the Bicycle Shredder. And right after our friends at Soschmiede in Germany, they also made a video tutorial on how to recreate their own version of the Bicycle Shredder. And more recently, precious plastic Turin shared this image of this incredibly sleek Bicycle Shredder. And just the last week I also found this guy, Jamil, that made another version of the Bicycle Shredder from the typical Dutch bikes. And we also want to stress how inspiring these hacks are, because these are entirely self-initiated by the community. We have never looked into those ones, we have never said that anyone should, but still people's motivation went towards their direction. And here we are, years down the line with many amazing and inspiring sort of creation from people around the world. We want to see more. And last, we've also come across this very inspiring experiment from Recycle Lab here in Lisbon, where they've been testing, thermoforming the precious plastic way. And for the past five years, we've been thrown at us this term over and over and over. You could thermoform it, why don't you thermoform it? And no one really tried it until now. And this guy went all the way and he really tried and it really looks very promising. Still very rough, but really really promising. So keep on going guys. Okay, so we come to the end of this monthly news. I really, really hope that you enjoyed the new format. If you didn't or if you hated it, let me know in the comments so that we can improve for next month. And don't be too harsh because it still hurts. Once again, thanks everyone for watching, supporting and working on tackling global problems. See you next month. Much thanks to Louis film in this monthly news.