Precious Plastic, Precious Plymouth!

Aim

Help us raise £20,000 to grow our movement and our mission to create an amazing carbon neutral plastic recycling community in Plymouth!

Who are we?

We are Precious Plastic Plymouth and Tavistock - an open source, open hardware artisan plastic recycling project founded on the ethos of the wonderful Precious Plastic movement (preciousplastic.com). We take waste plastic, shred it and re-mould it into a range of wonderful products. Currently we make soap dishes, pots and buttons, and are in the process of expanding our product range. 

Our plastic recycling mission is engaging, creative, and demonstrates just how simple and easy recycling plastic can be. We have a vision of a world where creative energy drives environmental change. We aim to bring the community together, helping us all to engage with recycling and plastic waste issues and get creative at the same time - but we need your help!

Why do we need funding?

Plastic is both a local and global problem. Plastic kills marine animals as they consume ocean plastic, which in turn brings plastic into our food and diets. Furthermore, plastic's carbon footprint is very high. Through its extraction from fossil fuels, processing into plastic, transportation and final disposal - (often incineration), it releases carbon dioxide, thus contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It is for this reason that waste plastic is so valuable.

To us, all the waste plastic around us is a precious resource. It is a material with such incredible potential that if utilised correctly can return into becoming something new and valuable, if it is treated with the respect that it deserves.

Currently, we have a basic plastic shredder, injection moulder and some moulds to recycle local Plymouth plastic into wonderfully colourful soap dishes, buttons and pots. We have engaged the community at schools and local events, spreading the knowledge and skills needed for creative plastic recycling. 

We now want to expand our reach and operations, to connect and engage with even more people and recycle even more plastics. By expanding our enterprise we will be able to not only increase our turnover of plastic recycling, but also engage wider communities in our mission. We strive to also help local businesses, makers, schools and community groups to engage in recycling, create products themselves, and even create custom moulds with us to create products for their own enterprise.

Your pledge will help us as runners up to unlock £1000 funding from Plymouth City Council's - #BackTheFuture LIVE: Plymouth Climate Challenge. In addition, we can apply for further funding from the Plymouth City Change Fund. This means we can deliver: 

• A higher turnover of recycled plastic with more creative ways to use it
• The ability to connect with more people, groups, organisation and businesses

What We Need:

With your help, we want to increase our making potential by upgrading our machines to allow us to shred a wider range of plastics on a larger scale, and to increase our injection moulding capability. We also want to expand into building a sheet press for creating sheet material, and an extruder for creating even more wonderful products. 

We are currently doing brilliant and fun things with a very small budget. We have made a human-powered pedal shredder and even made a new mould for the 'Green Maker Initiative' with Make South West and Low Carbon Devon, but we would love to grow and involve more of the community to inspire people to reduce and recycle plastics. 

We would love to reduce the carbon footprint of Plymouth by recycling locally and we would like to involve you! Some of our pledges are for our products and others are for you to join us for a workshop at our studio or in your school or group. You will not regret your pledge as we have a lot of creative fun whilst helping protect the planet!

Why Pledge?

• Earn an reward for becoming an eco-hero
• Contribute to community engagement, creativity and knowledge
• Benefit human, plant and animal welfare
• Help us turn waste plastic into a community resource for everyone
• Enable us to offer sustainable alternatives of plastic manufacture for local businesses and organisations

Rewards:

Costs for postage and packaging (within the UK) have been factored in to the rewards - so there's nothing to pay on top!

Thank You For Your Support!

Thank you for your support. We are all volunteers here at Precious Plastic Plymouth and Tavistock, and rely on the support of the community to keep us going. Together we will do amazing things. Be part of our future, be part of the future!

This project successfully funded on 21st January 2022