Coronavirus hit hard. Suddenly. Not many were prepared. Masks, shields and protection supplies became scarce from day one. Around the world. Precious Plastic wasn’t any more prepared than anyone else, the team was spread around the globe. Not really in the position to do much about it, let alone help the situation.

However, Precious Plastic is not the core team. Precious Plastic is a global movement made of incredible sapiens. Really, incredible. I met many. And in a matter of weeks many designs and solutions were already developed, tested and used in real life across the world to combat the virus. Face shields, respirator masks, hands-free door handles and more.

As we noticed these developments we could help but support the community with an amplifying voice to bring these solutions to bigger crowds. Weaving the solutions far within the community. So we quickly collected all the latest designs and solutions, put together a webpage, gathered technical drawing and files and pushed a media campaign to reach as many people as possible both in the Precious Plastic community to increase adoption as well as the broader society to help spread the message.

By now, 3 months in, we have people around the planet replicating those solutions to help their local community against the virus. Here are a few highlights:

Plastic Chunches and SuuT KuXtaL from Mexico 🇲🇽 have been producing thousands of face shields for hospitals, but also cafes, gardeners and other sectors.

Plasticpreneur, one of the workspaces that originally developed the designs in Austria 🇦🇹, rapidly set up a production in Uganda 🇺🇬to help prevent the spread in Africa. They made more than 15.000 shields so far.  

Viajen and Qitech from Germany 🇩🇪 have also been producing lots of face shields.

Many beautiful hands-free door handles have also been produced by Atelier Rehab in France 🇫🇷 and Precious Plastic Zurich in Switzerland 🇨🇭.

Africa has also been very active with projects in South Africa 🇿🇦 by Baobab Durban, the above mentioned project in Uganda 🇺🇬by Plasticpreneur and in Tanzania 🇹🇿 by Njombe Beyond.

And lastly, Rekaba from Chile. Precious Plastic helped set up this project in 2018. They've been honing their technique ever since and really blossomed creating thousands of shields to protect fellow Chileans from the virus.

Many of the moulds for these projects have been Version 4 team member Fritz that started his own company, Alumoulds making Precious Plastic moulds for people around the planet.

Needless to say, we are proud of the Precious Plastic community. Big time. Nice sapiens doing great work. Not taking the covid-19 crisis as an excuse to create more waste. But an opportunity to recycle more. These are the people you are supporting with your money. Be proud.

Ciao, Mattia!

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