 Welcome to Monthly News number 30. So, last month we had the pleasure to host the Plastic for Good Challenge together with the distributed design market. And they now made a super nice quality video. The Plastic for Good Challenge brings together the precious plastics community with the distributed design market platform. Thanks to the European Union and the Creative Europe Fund, we're bringing 15 creatives here to the precious plastics base camp in Eindhoven. And the workspace almost got flooded. And this month, some of us took a summer break because most of us work almost every single day to reach the goals we set out. So a one-week break was super nice. For example, I went to visit my grandma. I wish you all a merry Christmas. And many of us went to a wedding, but just not any wedding. It was our team members, Mathia and Kati, who actually met here in the workspace four months ago. And they did it just like in the movies, a wedding in Italy. It was a super long bus ride, but well worth it. Last month, we also said we're going to do a Q&A here in the workspace. So why not just do that now? Take it away, Dave. Welcome to the Q&A session. It's our first one ever. How many new machines and innovations up until now for the session four? We are working on a lot of little different innovations, but if we're talking machines, we're going to have three new ones. When are the new machine plans going to be released? The plan is to have everything ready in October this year. We first released it offline. So here in the workspace, you can drop by during the design week. Then we rolled it out later online. Has any work been done yet on the safety of plastic construction like toxic fumes? So we haven't really spent that much time on safety in the previous versions, because we were more focused on actually being able to recycle. But now we do. Suvda is actually working on that topic, so she can explain a bit more about it. Hi, I'm Sovda. I'm working on fume safety. So when plastics are melted, they produce VOCs as fumes. VOCs are volatile organic compounds, so we need to protect ourselves from it. So firstly, we are finding out what kind of VOCs are produced and how much by detection devices. And we are testing on different filters to extract the fumes safely. How hard is it to make 3D printing filament out of, say, plastic bottle caps? I would say it's kind of a challenge, especially also because printers don't really print HDPE, where bottle caps are made from. So you have a challenge making the filament, but also actually printing with it. How is the Styrofoam recycling going? We stopped that project because we had a lot of other stuff to do, but we still very much want to continue, but we had to focus. Is anyone developing a large-scale 3D printer that can run on recycled extruded plastic spools? You have a few people around the world doing it. One is found plastic in Netherlands actually, but I would say more and more people wanting to do that as well. What's the end game of plastic? Tough question, because we don't really know. We sort of look at it step by step, but I would say what it looks like now is we should stop producing new plastic, recycle everything we made so far, and meanwhile looking into alternatives, like how can we make sure we don't have to make new plastic, but come up with materials that are a bit more natural and biodegradable. So we also have a little research project going on in here that sort of looks a bit at the future of plastic, if we even call it plastic. Janis can tell more about that one. Hi, I'm Janis, and I work on Beyond Plastic. Beyond Plastic is a project that I developed together with Marina from Russia. Jilfe from Hungary, and right now Carmen is here, she's from the US. She's working on our machine, and the project is about developing processes and products from biodegradable materials, like food waste. In this case, for example, we use orange peels and turn them into solid materials. This one here is coffee and eggshells. And the foundation of this is to turn them into products in the end, like little bowls or cups, that then can replace single-use plastic objects. Is it possible to use recycled plastic to make electrical-guided plastic parts? So we never tested that, but we are very interested in it. So we're now developing a speaker casing, it's a very technical component, but Friedrich can show more about that. I'm Friedrich, I'm studying industrial design. And for my bachelor thesis, I'm developing a speaker in the coming weeks. The biggest challenge in there was to think really early about how to connect different parts to each other, because you have to think about how the plastic is flowing inside the mold. And because I want to keep the aesthetic of the flowing plastic, it's really important to keep this early in mind in developing it, so you know how different materials are going to look together and how everything is matching up in the end. Can you tell us some simple and homemade way to upcycle really available plastic bottles like straws and plastic bags? So one technique I kind of like is fusing plastic bags together. You just need an iron and some plastic bags. We actually made a video about that, Bjorn, about how to make a bag from a bag, but it's on the channel here somewhere. Could you make in-depth videos on the new tools and how to make them? Yes, we can. 25 new videos coming. I'm interested in the vision on how pressure plastic machines will fit into higher GDP economies. So we're definitely looking for business models that can sustain themselves and not by volunteers or running on grants. I mean, there could be nice extras, but it shouldn't be the basic starting point. So we're actually really figuring out these business models and what does it cost to build a machine, how long does it run, when do you need to repair it, whether it costs to rent your place, but so really working on the business area of each workspace. But Joseph is very much into this topic, so he can explain a bit more about that. So we're developing business models that are applicable to both the developed and the developing world context. And what we're focused on is giving you all the information and the methodology needed for you to decide how to apply this business model in your area. For example, maybe in the developing world context, you would be more focused on developing a raw material like a beam to be used to construction. And then in the developed world context, maybe more focused on developing a high-quality end product that can really tell the story of plastic recycling. What's happening with Project Cump and it's starting soon? Yeah, so Project Cump is definitely going on. Most of the people here are working on Fresh Plastic version 4. We have two people dedicated just to find a land for Project Cump so we can get started after all this move to our new piece of land. So probably best if they answer the question. So Mia Cat, we are still looking for a piece of land in Portugal. Visiting some different places, checking some different lands, we have different pros and cons. Next step was visiting some municipalities to get the knowledge about these lands. The possibilities of these lands like building permits, fire laws, protected areas and these boring things. Our main goal now is a land called Treasure Stone. For this we have the help of the local farmers Nuno and Sara for analysing the environmental conditions of this land. We also have the help of somewhere from Critical Concrete for analysing the state of the buildings, how are the walls, how are the foundations, if we can rebuild it or not, we have to demolish it and all this kind of stuff. We will be back in Portugal in September hopefully for buying this piece of land. We will keep you updated until then. Do you have any plans for expanding a precious plastic to use any other forms of waste like tyres, fabrics, etc.? Yes, so I think often we press plastic on the one hand to figure out how to recycle plastic but it actually feels like we are figuring out a much bigger thing which is how can you as a community or people around the world collaborate on solving a problem. And I think now we apply it to plastic but I could see this technique being applied to many other waste streams in the world. However, plastic is also a big topic so we really focus on that one. But I could see it in the future being useful for other waste streams as well. How is the work on one army going? One army is quite a big of work. I would say also going under the radar more. So focus is precious plastic, project camp, and under there we have one army which is a bit more the underlying infrastructure of all the communities. Also coming but not ready in October will take a bit longer. What else do you have for PP? We don't really have that much other plans for precious plastic. It's really focusing now on making version 4 ready, putting it online and then see what happens, reflect on it and then we make a new plan again. So for now it's all the stuff we've been doing, finishing it up. I'd like to contribute but what is needed the most? Good to hear you want to contribute. I would say at the moment most work is needed in coding so really helping to build the online platform. With video making like Phillip could really use a hand because a lot of videos to make in like a few months. So yeah Dave I kind of need some help now with the video making because Lucia is leaving so I would need some kind of new video editor friend. And as a community member you will Work. Klaipengpong. Work. Learn to slackline. Work. Eat vegan food. Work. Work. Work. Work. Work. Be in a clinging team. Go look at next.plastic.com to apply and now over to Kat for the community news. Hello and welcome to the community news. I will directly start with Plastic or Jail. They build a desktop injection machine which is a very useful modification because it makes the machine very small and mobile so you can just put it on any table you have available or even on the ground and get started with injecting. Robbie's Galleries shared another very simple stool design which is made out of three parts which can be assembled without screws and glue or anything it's just one material. So yeah that's very good for transport and good to assemble very easy to make. Another cool thing is that the material which they created looks just like marble so that's super cool and makes the material even more precious. Plastic Odyssey set up a recycling centre in Burkina Faso. So they put a lot of precious plastic machines there and now women from there are working with the machines to make their living with recycled plastic products. Furthermore they want to take the non-recyclable plastic and turn it into oil which will then fuel their planned expedition on a boat in 2020. They made a super nice video about this project so if you want to check it out the link is in our description. Last but not least, Wally who makes he built the shredder, precious plastic shredder but not to recycle plastic but to shred pine needles and turn it into a collection of objects which are made out of this 100% biodegradable material. As always there's much more going on in our community they are growing every day and everyone is super active so we just try to share as much as possible here but it's an ongoing thing so just keep updated and be inspired and keep up your great work and see you next time. So that was it for this month.