Precious Plastic is an open-source project that tackles the issue of plastic pollution by providing individuals and communities with a set of machines, blueprints, and resources that enable them to set up their own small-scale plastic recycling facilities. Throughout 2017 we developed Version 3 with a team of 12 people.

We joined forces with Parley for the Oceans to turn ocean plastic into Precious Plastic in Male city, capital of the Maldives. Although small the city is flooded with plastic waste and, currently, there are very little tools and facilities for people to recycle their plastic waste, so we created a plastic recycling workspace inside a shipping container to educate locals on recycling and show how to transform plastic waste into valuable things. We shipped the container to the Maldives, where it arrived two years later.

The container is now a recycling workspace and research centre to learn about plastic coming from the ocean. People from Precious Plastic and Parley for the Oceans work daily in the container to research, test, experiment and prototype solutions to turn ocean plastic into a valuable material.

Watch the full video here.