The word “limpi” stands for “clean” in Curacao, the native language of Papiamentu- a tropical island north of Venezuela’s coast.

Limpi is the name chosen by Debrah Nijdam and Mitchell Lammering for their new project built upon Precious Plastic machines right there in Curacao. Both aged 24, they share the same mission – to clean Curacao island from the plastic mess while creating new beautiful products.

The duo met in Rotterdam at the Hogeschool for Industrial Product Design. Before Precious Plastic popped up on their Facebook, they were already planning to go back to Curacao (Debrah’s homeland) and make new products from plastic. Precious Plastic just saved them a lot of time. 😉

In August 2016 they started building the shredder and extruder, however, it wasn’t that easy as they thought it would be.

“Yes, we knew the parts we needed but, for example, the 30cm long hexagon bar we could only order it 6-meter long and an affordable laser cutter in the area took a while to find.”

After adapting blueprints and measures to reduce costs and make the design fit Papiamentu’s unique reality they managed to finish the machines by October 2016. Let the melting begin!

Apparently, by now almost everyone in Curacao knows about them and it’s willing to help or team up. Their goal is to spread the word even more by making some workshops and classes to help fix the plastic problem.

“Our plan is to get the community more involved. We want to do this by starting some workshops with kids in schools. A lot of people contacted us already to do some presentations with locals already asking us where they can bring their plastic trash. Also, an artist who works with glass wants to work with us and combine glass with plastic.”

Limpi also aims at working with local initiatives to increase their impact. They’re in touch with CuraDoet, an organization organizing “cleaning days” to collect trash from the beach. However, once collected they don’t know what to do with it and that’s exactly where Limpi wants to jump in.

Right now, they work in a small shed near home, trying to make some inexpensive yet cool moulds which are cooked in the oven. However, in their saying, the oven is not very fast and a little difficult to make products.
“We have a few moulds, we improvise a bit too. There is a fish-shaped mould made of a cookie cutter and a round steel container which we use to make a stool top.”

Other interesting experiments include using a football ball to make a lamp top and a stool’s legs as a mould to wrap extruded plastic. Next stop in making machines for our “plastic friends” is the injection machine which will lead to more precise products.

We really like Limpi’s style and approach to plastic recycling. The products they made within the first few months of experiments give us great hope for the future and make us thrilled to see what else will come our way from the other side of the Atlantic.
Keep on melting guys, you rock!

If you want to know more about Limpi, make sure that you follow them on their Facebook page and Youtube channel.

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