Precious Plastic machines with their products
Person opening a mould with recycled products
two people working with recycled sheets
A girls showing the recycling symbol

Precious Plastic

Open source recycling machines, products, and online tools to empower anyone to start recycling plastic locally. 

A person shredding plastic

Precious Plastic

The alternative plastic recycling system run by thousands of people around the world using knowledge that are shared free and open source online.

Plastic waste on a beach

Problem

Plastic waste is damaging ecosystems around the planet. To date, still less than 10% of all plastic is recycled and production is planned to triple by 2040.

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Sheetpress machine with sheets

What we do

Precious Plastic provides people the tools, platforms and knowledge to recycle plastic waste locally, around the world.

How does it work

We want to increase the amount of plastic that is recycled around the world. To do this we empower tens of thousands of people around the world with everything they need to start recycle plastic locally.

We develop machines to recycle plastic and share how to replicate them open source online, for free.  So everyone can rebuild them and start recycling in their neighbourhood transforming plastic waste into valuable products.

We also provide business tools to help run a business from recycling plastic. People can buy & sell these recycled products, machines and parts on the Precious Plastic Bazar (our marketplace).

By now, there is a big global community that sees plastic as a precious material.

Precious Plastic solutions

Precious Plastic extrusion machine
Precious Plastic shredder machine pro

Machines to recycle plastic, free and open source!

Precious Plastic design and develops machines to recycle plastic. These machines are then open sourced and shared online for free so that anyone can replicate them and help to recycle more plastic. So far we've made 7 machines for various needs and outputs. You can learn more here.

Precious Plastic sheetpress machine
person working with Precious Plastic extrusion machine
Precious Plastic shredder and injection machine
A hand crafting plastic into new valuable product
image of waste, shredded plastic and final product showing the recycling process
Precious Plastic how-to interface

Techniques to craft recycled plastic products

We share techniques and guides on how to craft plastic waste into beautiful and valuable products. People in our community learn, replicate, iterate and share back improvements in a constant feedback loop that advances this emergent craft.

The marketplace for plastic recycling

The Precious Plastic Bazar is the marketplace for plastic recycling where people can buy and sell machines, parts and recycled products. The Bazar helps people to generate an income, fuelling local economies around recycling plastic. In 2020 the Bazar processed 200K€, these are money going straight to the recyclers.

Precious Plastic bazar interface
Interface of the buying process on the bazar
Precious Plastic academy interface
Precious Plastic events interface
Precious Plastic map interface

Community Platform

The Community Platform is the digital place where the Precious Plastic community meets and collaborates globally. The tool includes a map, the academy, the how-to guides and events page. It currently helps 10K recycling entrepreneurs to connect and collaborate.

people brainstorming Precious Plastic
people posing in front of the Precious Plastic logo
girls posing in front of a Precious Plastic machine

An alternative recycling system

More than 500 workspaces and tens of thousands of people around the planet use Precious Plastic to recycle plastic, educate communities and tackle the plastic waste problem.

Two people wearing the Precious Plastic badge
people showing a recycled product
people giving a recycling workshop to kids
kid hugging a Precious Plastic shredder
Two people recycling plastic and smiling
Group of people demonstrating the recycling process

Some numbers

500+

recycling workspaces in 100+ countries working with Precious Plastic

380+

tons of plastic recycled in 2019

€ 2m

global annual revenue from all Precious Plastic workspaces

€ 5m

recycling workspaces in 100+ countries working with Precious Plastic

€ 200k

processed on the Precious Plastic Bazar in 2020

15m

views on Youtube

800k

annual visitors on our websites

90k

users on the forums (discontinued)

7k

users on the Community Platform

10k

users on Discord

100k

downloads of Precious Plastic kits

Get involved

We came quite far in building a global community of plastic recyclers. But this isn’t enough. There is still a big problem our there, we need more people recycling and taking care of our plastic.

And this means.. more work ahead for Precious Plastic!  Our team is daily carrying out more research, improving out solutions and innovating recycling.

If you want to help out you can either start recycling with Precious Plastic or make a donation so we can continue to do this free & open source. Or do both :)