 Alright, welcome to the full launch video of Precious Plastic version 4. It's a bit like one of those keynotes where they release a new product, except this one is going to be a bit rougher because we're in a rough building. And also it's going to be quite a lengthy video because, well, it's a lot of work that went in here. One year full development with 100 volunteers, so it's like 90,000 hours of work, compressed into like a half hour video, so it's not that long if you think about it like that. But I would recommend to get some popcorn and get comfortable. And I would also recommend to really watch the whole video because then you really understand where we are and what we're going to do. But you could also skip to specific chapters. So first I'm going to give a little bit of a recap on version 3, where we currently are at. Then I'm going to talk a bit about the problem, where we're actually doing all of this. Then a bit about the machines, so the developments we did there. About product design, seeing all the new products we developed. And then Joseph is going to talk a little bit about the business side and the bazaar. Then Kat is going to talk about the starter kits. Then Mattia is going to talk about our online community platform. Then I'll show you a few research projects we've also been working on. And finally I'll give you some insights on how we actually developed this whole thing with volunteers for one year. Yeah, so I would say have fun. Okay, so currently pressure plastic is set up around these four different machines. We released them three years ago and people all around the world started using them. So right now we have over 400 workspaces around the world of people that recycle the plastic. We also have over 70,000 people in the forums that talk about these machines and share their feedback and updates. So there's quite a big community developed around it. And most people that build these machines use them for educational reasons, to really show other people you throw in plastic waste and something valuable comes out. So that's been a very powerful tool. However, the recycling numbers are not necessarily that high. Also because it's difficult to do this on a daily basis to sustain yourselves because we never really provided the business models to do so. So a lot of people in the community now really have to figure it out themselves. And this is something we really wanted to improve for version 4 to increase the recycling rates. And actually around the world we have way more people that want to recycle plastic. So if you can see on our map over 12,000 people put their hands up saying they want to get started recycling. So there's a big demand of more people that want to do something about it and the world needs more recycling. So that's why we started building version 4 to really increase recycling all around the world. And first let me show you a little bit what is actually the problem again, why we're doing this. So it's 2020 now and we're all quite aware of our big plastic waste problem we have around the world. And I actually remember when I started this project a few years back that 2020 used to be this milestone for companies to reduce their amount of waste or not use any virgin plastic or be fully circular. But that didn't really happen. The line of plastic production still goes up every year. More and more plastic is being made and more and more plastic ends up in the landfill, the ocean or it gets burned. Anyway the upside is that we did became very aware of our big plastic problem. It became a global topic to talk about and we might not have the solutions yet but at least we start thinking about it. And stuff like this is also very complex these kind of problems because they're massive and they evolve many different parties. So you also need to have many different people working on many different solutions. So for instance on the one hand we need to reduce the amount of plastic we produce. Stop using disposable stuff. Plastic is not a disposable material. But we also need to clean up all the plastic that's already out there in the oceans making sure it's not there anymore. We need to recycle and reuse all the plastic that we already made. Meanwhile we need to reinvent new materials that can replace plastic in the future. So we need people and organizations to work on many different solutions. And as pressure plastic grows we get involved into more areas. But our main focus is still on recycling. To make sure that all the plastic that's out there gets recycled and reused in a proper way. So one of the main things we did for this version is making sure that people can focus. Because we noticed in our own community that the people focusing on one specific machine get a much better output. And it also avoids them having to build three different machines and knowing how to run them. So we really wanted to work towards that, having specialists in our community. And we also developed the machines for that. So the machines are more robust, have a higher output. And they're also a bit more complex to build but you only need to build one. So now I want to show you some prototypes that we made. So let's start with our shredder. And this is a crucial machine for recycling because it basically shreds your plastic waste into small flakes. And we already had a shredder but it was too small, we needed a bigger one. So first we started looking into a single-axe shredder where the blades are turning around. And meanwhile a piston that runs on air compression pushes the plastic into the blade so it shreds. It's a nice technique but it was a bit over complex and too expensive to actually replicate. So we started looking into a dual-axe shredder where you have two blades that pull in the plastic and meanwhile they shred it. And this is a nice mechanism, worked pretty well. But there's a lot to configure here and really fine tune. So for instance the configuration of the blades, like how many blades do you need, what's the thickness, how are they aligned. And also the blade itself, like what are the amount of teeth you have there and how big are the teeth. Because this really influences the way how you shred. So once we sort of sorted out the whole mechanism behind shredding, we looked into the machine as a whole. So what's the frame where it's on, what kind of motor do we need. But we also really spent quite some time on the box itself. Because we really wanted to make sure that you could easily take it apart and open it up. Because this makes it much easier to maintain and repair the machine in the future in case something goes wrong. So this is roughly the development of our shredder. Let's now have a look at our extruder. So for an extrusion machine you basically have a screw that moves around and transports the plastic from one side to the other and then meanwhile it heats up and it comes out molten. So we already had an extruder machine and it was a pretty good starting point for our new machine. But the output wasn't really high enough and also it wasn't really made to run all day long. It really needed to be more robust. So we took this as a starting point and built a new prototype which was basically a beef top version from that one. Bigger motor, more solid build and also really adding up some sensors to measure what's going on. For the temperature and the pressure to really make sure we fully understand this machine. But it still kind of had the same output but we knew exactly what was going on. And then in the end we increased the screw diameter. So this is the original one and this is the new one. So as you can see a much bigger screw so it has a much bigger output. So now let me show you our sheet press which was quite a challenge. And for the sheet press we really had to start from scratch which meant a bit more work. So basically we wanted to make a machine that can make a big sheet from recycled plastic. So we started off with the hot press where you have two hot surfaces that press together the plastic and compress a sheet. This worked okay but it was a bit of a slow process because the whole machine had to heat up and cool down. So we figured maybe we should separate these processes. So we got an old pizza oven and a cold press. And then you first heat it up externally and then you put it in somewhere else to press it together. This was a much quicker process than the hot press. So we kind of liked it but we wanted a bigger sheet. But big pizza ovens like that don't exist. So we had to build our own oven really from scratch also figuring out how do you even open doors and stuff like that. And with this we also needed a bigger press so we had to build this beast. It's really heavy. So this kind of worked okay but we were still like it's not really what we really want because it's a very bulky big system. So then actually we went back again to the drawing table and we finally had a final version of the machine which is kind of an efficient version of the hot press, a combination of all of these machines together. So building a machine is one thing but you also need to do a lot of material testings. So here's one of the first sheets for instance. It's kind of a sheet but also not really how we have it in mind. So then they got a little bit better over time but this one as you can see is still very warped so it's not a smooth flat sheet. Improved. Then they got better, smoother and more flat but the surfaces were still very rough. So we also needed to make sure they were smooth and managed. So here we have it, our final machines. We have a shredder, extruder and a sheet press and they're all semi industrial which means they're not hobby level but also not super industrial. They're sort of there in the middle and one thing we always keep in mind when we develop a machine is that they're friendly to use and not on super high speeds or a lot of noise. We really like to make plastic recycling a nice job so the machines are really designed for that and also they're made to be replicated. So all the parts are very logically documented but also where you can find the parts because in the end they're all shared open source in line for free. So you can all download the blueprints and build them anywhere in the world. So that's it for the machines. Now let me show you what you can actually make with them. So currently we already have members all around the world making beautiful objects from recycled plastic and we really love them but they're often very small and very much household products where we think there's much more possible with recycled plastic than we wanted to see for version 4 like pushing really the boundaries of it. So one of the main things we did is say maybe you shouldn't have to have products as an output but it could also be raw material like just making the sheets or making beams and really use this as a material to make other things with. So for instance with beams you could also make different kind of profiles which is much more versatile to use to construct other things with. So the things you could make with that is furniture like a shelving system or as tools and chairs to sit on and what we like to do here as well is on the one hand make it fully from recycled plastic to just see how far we can push it like this one or the pink one but also combine it with other materials to really get a more diverse look into it. So furniture is a nice category to explore more. Another product we made is more for the community that does a lot of events. So pressure plastic members around the world often do this to educate other people and they always need to make a product. So we designed a carbine with a nice mold that you can just inject at once and you have the product. So it's really nice for people to give away and it also says you can put your website on there so it's a nice tool for people to just take home and use. Another product I really like is the socket and mainly because it's just such a boring product but it's very functional and they're everywhere around us and they're always made out of virgin material so we figured maybe we should try to see if we can make them from plastic, from recycled plastic but this product is like this sort of resembles this whole category of products that are just very functional and boring but very much part of our daily lives and I think we should just start using recycled plastic for that and I can also just look and feel way more precious and valuable than the original ones. Another product we wanted to make is to see if we can make something big but not necessarily fully out of recycled plastic but trying to combine it as well. So here we have a mold which is a connector piece for modular structure so you can make geodesic domes and here we really use the plastic as being the connector part because that's sort of the most complex part with a lot of weird angles which is perfect for plastic to use with because you can mold it in the shape and you really use wood for the structural parts so it's really a combination of using the best of those two materials. And another product we've often been requested by the community actually is they asked us can you make a brick so something to just build something with. So we've been out to explore that to just see what kind of bricks do we need, what's the size so made a lot of prototypes. In the end we made a brick that you can use to really build something so here we made a wall but obviously there's much more possible with this brick. And that's also how we kind of see these products as a starting point to spark inspiration but also really to start diving into other categories and we share all the blueprints open source online so you can all use it, download it, replicate it but also improve it so really see what you can make with this brick so we're very much looking forward to that. So that's it for the products we developed, you can find them all on the website and now we're going to talk a little bit more about the business part of version 4 and how you can actually sustain yourself by making all these machines and products and Joseph is going to talk more about that. Hi there, so precious plastic has always encouraged people to make businesses using our machines and methodology but we never really provided people the tools, resources or any examples for how to do that but the truth is we like when people make businesses from precious plastic that means they're doing recycling full time, they can hire some people and they're really pushing the amount of plastic that's out there being turned into something new. So with precious plastic version 4 which has some bigger machinery that requires a little bit more investment we put a lot of time and effort into thinking about, okay how do we help people make a successful business using precious plastic? So our approach was because we couldn't just make one business plan that was going to apply to all the machines and all these different situations around the world was to focus on making three business tools the action plan, the workspace calculator and the business plan template. The action plan is like a quick and dirty business modeling tool where you fill out your mission, your products and services, your target groups all those different components that are important for really making a successful business. Seems kind of simple at first but really it's one of those most important parts about doing your business planning. The workspace calculator is a spreadsheet financial forecasting tool where you input your products that you're going to make, how much it's going to cost you your investment costs like a machine or your monthly costs like your rents, utilities, all that good stuff and then you can look at on a monthly basis, okay I'm going to need to sell this many products and price them at this price point in order to be financially sustainable. You can also see on a monthly basis how much profit I'm going to take home and some nice graphs to help you understand that. The business plan template is a tool, it's kind of like an outline to help you take the information that you created in the first two tools and roll that into a full long form business plan. And a business plan is kind of important for going out there and getting the financial help that you need to start your workspace. So whether that's from a financial institution like a bank or a funding organization that gives out grants, most often they're going to want to see a business plan. So this is an outline tool that you can use. There's some other tools out there on the internet you can use as well. The point is this is going to help you get that financial funding that's going to help you start your new workspace. The other thing we did was create five different business models where we applied these three tools to the precious plastic version for machines. So you can see some examples about, okay, how can I guide my business model towards what has worked currently and what we think is going to work in the future with precious plastic. Okay, that's it for the business planning section. And now we're going on to talk about the precious plastic bizarre. So the bizarre is an online marketplace for buying and selling precious plastic machines, parts, raw materials, and products. It was created during precious plastic version three, but we didn't put that much emphasis on it. We just put a link on our website, but it's now become a really, really important tool as part of our digital infrastructure. And the reason is, on one hand, it can help people get started with precious plastic by buying machine if they can't make it themselves. And on the other hand, once they get started and they have their workspace, they can sell their products through the bizarre. So here's a graph showing our transaction volume over time. You can see that in 2017, we started off a little bit slow, but picked up speed in 2018. And by 2019, we were doing 15,000 euros in transaction volume on average per month. And by the end of 2019, we did about 200,000 euros in total transaction volume. And that's great. I think that shows that there's some people out there that are really making some significant income from the bizarre as well as some people who are really getting the parts, products and machines that they need. So here's a breakdown of the sales by category. You can see the machines and machine parts is the biggest category, which kind of makes sense based on the fact that this is one of the only places you can find precious plastic machines. So in 2020, we're going to be putting a lot more investment in time and effort into improving the bizarre. So stay tuned for those updates and let us know what you think. And for now, Kat is going to tell you a little bit more about the starter kits. So currently, we have several hundreds of precious plastic work spaces all over the world, which seems like a lot, but on a global scale, it's really not that much. It basically means that the people who run the spaces are globally connected, but locally, they're mostly on their own. They need to take care of everything, of collecting, building the machines, shredding all the plastic and making new products. That's a lot to take care of and requires many different skills. Now we want to help people to focus on what they can do best. So here's the plan. It's not about having individuals recycling around the world. Locally, we need more people to work together and build up a strong and resilient ecosystem. This is what we're launching now with version 4 and we called it the precious plastic universe. And this is how it works. There are many different roles in this universe. Collection points, machine shops, work spaces and community points. Each role focuses on one part and together with the other parts it forms the complete ecosystem. Let me show you an example. The collection point focuses on getting the local community to bring their plastic and has the space and people to sort it out into different types. The shredder workspace now gets the plastic from the collection point and just focuses on shredding the plastic into plastic flakes. And then the sheet press workspace gets the shredded plastic and can focus on making high quality sheets. To run a local network, you will need a good bunch of dedicated people who master their role and collaborate with each other to make everything run. To make this easier for everyone, we created this. Starter kits. We put together packages of everything you need to know to get started with one of these roles like a collection point or a sheet press workspace. These include blueprints for the machines, floor plans for the whole space, videos on how to set it up and run it, business plans, graphic materials and more. You can go on preciousplastic.com and see what kind of starter kits we have and see what fits you most. If you are more technical, you can be a machine builder or if you want to design, you can be a workspace where people gather in a community point. Go on the website, check it out and as always you can download it for free and get started. So these are all more the practical and offline tools but what really makes precious plastic unique is its community. People coming together from all around the world to share knowledge and information. And by now we have people almost in every country around the world. And these people most likely will never meet in real life, however they are connected through our digital tools. That's very much why these digital tools are so crucial to the project. Up until now people would meet on our online forums and this place has always been a bit chaos. We like all sorts of information and day-to-day chatting as well as like more long-term documentation projects. And right at the beginning of the year we very much decided to split the two so that we would focus more on creating platforms and tools for long-lasting information that will be useful in like 10, 20 years time from now. And whereas for the more short-term information and chats we are going to be using external tools that are simply faster, better and more supported. So let me show you what we've been working on for the last 12 months. So now with the help of our high-tech screen I'm going to show you the new precious plastic digital ecosystem and its tools. So first we have of course the preciousplastic.com website which very much serves as a showcase of the project so that people can see who we are, what we do, what we stand for. Second we have the Bazaar and as Joseph explained we're going to be releasing a much stronger, more powerful marketplace that will enable way more people to sustain themselves financially while recycling. Third is our community platform and this is very much a tool for our community to come together, create knowledge and share it between each other to tackle the plastic problem. And this time we went full-on to really develop it from scratch with our own team, with our own developers in-house right here and let me show you a few features of this new platform. So feature one is the how-tos and this is a game-changer tool for precious plastic very much because up until now the generation of knowledge was pretty much confined to us here in the headquarter whereas with this tool now we're going to enable people all around the world to share how they do things and how they find solutions to the plastic problem. The how-tos are very simple step-by-step guides filtered by tags and you can easily see the exponential potential of this tool when it's used by thousands of people all around the world. Second is our map. We already had a map in version 3 but we basically revisited and made sure that we aligned it with the precious plastic universe. It is now a much more powerful and granular map that has different categories for all the different pins and all the workspaces, all the collection points, community points and machine shops. We used to have the want-to-get-started pins on the map and we decided to remove that as we envisioned the community points to be the central place where everyone that wants to get started will come together. Third is the academy, a central place for all precious plastic knowledge and from now on we're going to go much more in detail and in depth with our information. This is the place where you can learn how to bid machines, how to make products, how to collect plastic and so on. And this is the place to go if you want to learn about recycling. Fourth is profiles. And the profiles are very much aligned with the precious plastic universe and you will be able to create profiles for workspaces, for machine shops, for collection points, for community points and so on. Last is the event, a place where people that make presentations, precious plastic meet-up or beach clean-ups can create an event and share with our community what they're doing so that we can have a list of events happening at any given time around the world. So these are all the core functionalities of the new precious plastic community platform. We're releasing in beta and in the beginning it will be quite buggy, so please bear with us or help us fix those bugs on GitHub. But we believe that this is going to be a crucial tool for precious plastic as well as other projects around the world. And that's very much why we share all the code open source online for free so that more people around the world can use it to create their own communities. So all of these tools, machines, people, infrastructure is part of what we call the precious plastic universe. It's a master plan for an alternative recycling system around the world. So machines are a crucial part for the universe to work because they actually allow people to turn their plastic waste into a new plastic product. And with this new version we made bigger, better, more efficient machines so they really allow people to recycle more plastic on a daily basis. The starter kits are like the kickstarter of the precious plastic universe. A compressed package of information and tools for people to download online and start. And for version 4 we created a set of business tools to help people in the universe be successful with their recycling projects. So people can start to make money and recycle plastic full-time as their job. And our digital tools and platforms will help to connect thousands of recycling entrepreneurs around the world, collaborating and helping each other to fight plastic waste from many multiple angles. Alright, so that's basically everything we developed for the precious plastic universe during version 4. However, during that period we also had a few site projects going on. So let me show you. So our first research project is sorting. Because this is a big problem in the plastic industry, there's a lot of different types of plastic, but it's hard to identify which type of plastic it is, which makes it difficult to recycle. So we were looking into ways on the one-hand scan the type of plastic to see what it is using advanced scanners. And then also once you know to really sort it out, so that's why we have this robot arm, to really sort out the different types of plastic. And this is really like an experimental research project, but it's the first step to see how can we optimize our recycling process. So like I mentioned in the beginning, we also really need to look into alternatives for plastic, like how can we replace it with less harmful material. So in this area we really look into finding alternatives for that with more natural materials. For instance, orange peels, coffee grinds or wheat bran. And here we made a bowl out of it. So you can use this more for festivals. So instead of using a disposable plastic thing, you can use a disposable wheat bran bowl. And in this way, if you throw it away, it can just easily be composted. So we really developed the whole process, but also the machine and the molds. So people can start making this to slowly get more alternatives going. And for board projects, we have much more information on the website with some videos to dive more into it. So I would say have a look there if you're interested to explore more and keep on developing it. All right, so that was all the development we did for version 4. Now there's one last thing I want to talk about. And it's actually the way how we developed this version, because that in itself feels quite unique. So a little over a year ago, we won an award of €300,000. And the local municipality said you can have this empty warehouse for free for one year. So we were like, OK, it would be cool if we can invite web designers, machine builders, product designers, vegan chefs all together to make this new version come to life and giving them a place to sleep, food and buying materials so they can all develop. But everyone came as a volunteer. So we did that in the last year. Joseph is going to actually share a few funny facts about that. OK, in total we spent over €290,000 to develop precious plastic version 4. The biggest spending category was the workspace where we spent over €100,000 to do all the research and development into the new machines. The next biggest category was the kitchen where we spent €45,000 to feed everyone some delicious vegan meals. And the last category was the living expenses which we spent on giving some houses for people to come and volunteer here. So that might seem like a lot of money but if you think about it, if we were to pay everyone just the minimum wage that would account to over €1.5 million. So we really benefited from all the people donating their time to work on this project over the year. And people did come from all around the world to come work on this project. The biggest contributor was France with 11 volunteers followed by the Netherlands and then the United States. We lived in 10 houses with six bands as well and we had two dogs stay with us. Yeah, so that's been quite a fun ride. So massive thanks for FAME for actually giving us this award. It gave us a lot of freedom to try this out and to really develop in a different way. So big thanks. Thanks for everyone in the pressure plastic community so far and especially the early adopters that really dared to pioneer and figure a lot of stuff out themselves. So thank you Zelenu, Bob, Shanghai, Ukraine. You guys have really been pushing it. And also all the people that just support us and they give us positive feedback and also the negative ones. So thank you Gunter. And a huge massive thanks for all the weirdos all around the world that actually dared to came here to this cold, empty workspace in the Netherlands to spend their free time developing this project. I mean, it was really amazing getting to know all of you guys and seeing all your energy. It's really good. Gave an enormous boost to the project. So awesome. And finally, all the people that have been supporting on Patreon and the internet that make sure we can financially sustain ourselves over time. So yeah, that's been very awesome. So if you guys want to support you can go to support.pressureplastic.com and see how you can help us out. For now, thanks for watching and I think I'm going to clean up all this mess in here. Oh, and make sure to actually watch our promo video and share it around. This is very powerful for the project. So, yeah.