Recycled plastics

Piers Mossuto

Piers Mossuto.

Piers Mossuto is so passionate about the circular economy, that he established Precious Plastic, in Melbourne, to recycle plastic. In an interview with STEM Punks, Piers explained, “we are the Melbourne charter of a global community, a community that was based in the Netherlands, originally. They had come up with plans for recycling machines that are small scale, and they were able to design them and give them out, open source, to encourage people to grow and set up their own communities, recycling workshops and education as well.” Since starting Precious Plastic, a national collector has donated 300 000 plastic bottle caps. Piers explained that bottle caps are great for recycling because of the colour variety and low temperatures required to melt them. Piers described the plastic recycling process. “The caps come in and we’ll throw a whole box of them into our granulator which crushes the caps into a fine chip. You can then put that fine plastic chip into a hopper where it is melted and can then be used for injection, extrusion or compression moulding.” Piers described his goals for Precious Plastic, this year. “Now that we’ve been doing this for a couple of years, we want to replicate what we’re doing around Australia. We are supplying plastic, we’re doing manufacturing and we’re doing education as well, so we’ll be touching base with a few schools. We’ve got a few days set up where we’ll be talking about recycling but also showing them how to recycle rather than just talking about it. It’s a little bit more fun. Our goal for this year is we’re building a school-safe machine for kids to use in a maker space. They can recycle their own plastic waste and turn it back into something precious, whether it be 3D printing or moulds. That’s the aim for this year.” Further information about Precious Plastic, can be located at plastic.org