Shirley, who’s an English major student, has been following Precious Plastic over a period of time. Feeling there was a need for the machines in HK, she gathered some help from other students (Shek, Clara, Suzanne, and Carey) who also care about environmental issues. The whole building journey wouldn’t have been easy without the additional support from William who’s major in mechanical engineering and Martin, lab technician from the engineering department. And that’s how they get their first working shredder done!

It’s so fortunate that their college offered its large working space (Creativity Lab) to build their machine.
Aside from that, they applied for some funding from their college to kick start their plan.
“Our major goal is to seek and test potential sustainable business models that can allow the technology to create a bigger impact both locally and internationally.” they say.

On the other hand, they are in the process of improving and testing their injection machine. They have already collected 900 PET bottles for machine testing. However, they found that PET is difficult to work with injection and that the machine often gets stuck.They would be very grateful if there was someone from the community who is able to give them some advice! Anyone? Contact @wkhs if you have experience or tips in regards.

They plan to make keychains with recycled plastic to increase public awareness after successfully building their injection machine. They are also looking forward to push their plan by exhibiting their machine in the campus.

“We hope that more safety measures can be developed for the machines. We also hope that more people will share their machine building experiences in the forum so that the building knowledge will be more accessible.” (We couldn’t agree more 😁)

“We also want to thank the community for making a great contribution to small scaled recycling and making the world a better place.” ☺️

On a final note we really, really love the documentation images they create with funny illustrations that help soften the heavy topic of plastic pollution.

Thanks CUHK for bringing Precious Plastic this far.
You can check their activities & updates on their facebook page.

Big up @sueyeekhor for researching and writing this article.

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