 Welcome to a new precious plastic video. This one is the story behind the project. So this whole project basically started when I noticed how much plastic we produce each year and it's just getting more. And how little of it actually gets recycled. They say less than 10% of it. I always wonder how they get these numbers, but obviously it's a lot. I mean it's everywhere around. And plastic recycle machines are expensive and complex, so only the big industry can really afford them. So about four years ago I started working on this as my graduation project at the design academy. I wanted to provide people the machine so they can get started recycling plastic themselves locally. But I mean I studied design, I don't know how to build machines. So I started watching a lot of YouTube videos and made my first extrusion machine. Which I still have. From there I continued to work on the machines, build a bigger version and different ones. And they work pretty well so I made a few objects and shared all the technical drawings and blueprints on how to build these machines online. Open source so others could build it as well. And a few did. Well actually I think just two guys did. One from Germany and one from Spain. This made me realize that sharing something open source online is easy. You just throw everything you have online. But really making sure that people understand it and want to get started is a whole different game. This needed to be improved, a version 2 of the project. At that time I also won an award and decided to give it away to a machine builder that could help me out developing these machines. Because well I needed help, I'm still not a machine builder. And this is how I met Case, an employee and he didn't have a job. And he really wanted to start working on these machines. However, I also received a very nice video from Alex in Mexico. Hello there, my name is Alejandro Luna and I'm a mechatronic engineer. That means if he has balls and wires, I can make it work. He also wanted to really help out. So I was like yeah, it would be great but I already gave the budget to Case and I don't really have any more to give away. And he said well I want to come anyway so I was like sure and he came. He worked on the machines, we came friends and we called him Taco. Meanwhile I did a material research in countries all over the world. Because we really wanted to make sure that the machines could be built everywhere in the world. And then we started developing prototypes, a lot of prototypes. For instance, here is a little process behind our shredder. The first one, well that just didn't shred. We tried another option. Yeah, and that's a great eater. We built a high-speed version, but whatever we threw in just came out. We tested mounting these sawblades on it, which looks pretty impressive but didn't really work either. Step by step we got a bit better and managed to shred, but we didn't really like it. It was super noisy and aggressive. We were interested in a friendlier process. See if we could also power it by just human power. Finally we found something that could shred on low speed. He just eats it. And that's basically how our shredder has been developed. And the other machines pretty much like that. We also did a ton of material experiments. Working with plastic and see what it does and how the material flows, how the colors are planned and what gradients you get. Because working with plastic like this is pretty new. I mean you can work with wood, metal and ceramic, but really working with plastic on a small scale isn't really done. So there was a lot to figure out and learn. And we also worked with some students from universities to see what other creative solutions they can come up with working with plastic. So once we got all this information we need to make sure that we could share it in a way that people actually understand it. So I started making these instruction videos. Welcome to a new precious plastic instruction video. Meanwhile, Mathia dropped by in my workspace an interaction designer from Germany. Hey, I'm Mathia. Also a really nice guy. And he wanted to help out with the projects to share all this knowledge in an understandable clear way. And he started working on the website. But we also needed a new logo because the other one was kind of difficult to use. So we asked the community for help, gathered a lot of input, voted and finally came up with this one. Which I really like. Thank you. Then that moment comes of getting everything online. Super exciting. I mean we've put a lot of effort in this thing. But I'm kind of a deadline guy so we had quite a tight one. Because literally the next day after a project got online we went six months backpacking in Asia. I love travelling around, seeing all these amazing things, eating weird food, seeing how people work, live and have a different perspective on life. But I also love learning about the plastic problems in the maladies. Visiting the slums in India, diving into landfills in Cambodia or cleaning up beaches from plastic in Indonesia. Have a look at storyhopper.com if you want to see more of these videos I made during the trip. Anyway meanwhile I was travelling but the whole project was online and people started spreading, watching, downloading and building these machines. My internet access was limited because I was in the slums in India. But every now and then I got a nice picture from someone that built the machines. Here they are being built somewhere in Brazil. Barcelona, Ukraine, Singapore, Shenzhen, Japan, Budapest. They are used for workshops in Spain, by students in Mexico or on a beach in Portugal. It's great to see a full set in South Korea or have people working with it in Indonesia. Seeing organisations using them to set up recycle shops. And seeing them tested somewhere in South Africa and get their feedback. Some individuals are even replicating and selling the machines as a business. Oh and if you think machine building is just for boys, these four girls build a set in Taiwan. And then it starts. People collecting, separating, drying, discovering the beauty of plastic, making molds, creating mirrors, skateboards, flower pots, designing lamps and even water filters for developing countries. And meanwhile Mathia bought a van and started driving around Europe spreading the project on a more analogue way. Now our main focus is to have people recycling plastic all over the world. So it's pretty satisfying seeing people all over the world actually getting started. But travelling around you realize how massive this plastic problem is. I mean here in the developed world, our trash and plastic is stuck to way in bins and containers. So it's there, but we don't really see it. But over there you can literally see it everywhere around. It's affecting people's lives, environment, animals, everyone that lives around that area. There's enough material around to be working with for decades. Now luckily about a hundred people worldwide are setting up these small plastic recycle shops, which is just great. However, on a global scale the impact isn't really that big yet. There could be a shop like that in every village of the world. We've been working on a plan on how to get there and we could really use some help. Visit next.preciousplastic.com to see how you can help us out.