Precious Plastic – Exploration Round 2

What comes into your mind when you hear the word “Plastic”? Yes, it’s convenient and has a lot of benefits yet it causes so many problems. One of the biggest problems is its waste. But Why?

Nowadays, the world’s population is growing more and more and we need more space for living and if more plastics are being used and wasted, it will take up more space and we won’t have any places to live. Also, it also destroys our green Earth. So, why don’t we do something to not let plastic take over our beautiful planet? One of the best and easiest way is to recycle or upcycle or use it again. That’s what my classmates and I were doing in the exploration called “Precious Plastic”.

On the day of the first week, we watched a documentary about plastics that are being thrown away everywhere in the ocean. Then I tried visiting some websites about plastic (precious plastic, plastic bank, plastic ocean, etc). After that, I was researched and found out all seven types of plastic and their recycling codes and those are Polyethylene Terephthalate, High-Density Polyethylene, Polyvinyl Chloride, Low-Density Polyethylene, Polypropylene, Polystyrene and other.

Then, I watched some videos about how plastics are made. After that, we got an idea of recycling plastic machine from an open source website called Precious Plastic. We went through some websites and brainstorm about products that we could make after we recycle. Then, we divided into teams to see how to make those recycle precious plastic machines and there were four of them; shredder, extrusion, injection and compression machine. After that, we found an organization in Siem Reap called Naga Earth where they also have one of the machines and we set a plan to visit them.

So, we went to Siem Reap to visit Naga Earth. Friendly people at Naga Earth toured us around their campus. I saw many interesting things. I saw biofuels that are recycled, their own soap, silk screening, recycling paper and two of the four plastic machines. Pictures below shows what my teammates and I did at Naga Earth.

We asked them about the machines but after that, we decided to not make the machine. The reasons were because it’s very hard and dangerous to make (we’re too young), also, we are not experts. We had another idea to buy it but it was too expensive. So, we thought that; Ok, we don’t have those machines so we can upcycle and recycle those plastics.

The next day of the trip, we went to another organization called “ Rehash Trash” for a workshop. The workshop was about recycling plastic bags into items. We made different beautiful products such as baskets, coasters, bags, bracelets, etc. Pictures below shows what my teammates and I did at Rehash Trash.

When we got back to our school, we led a workshop to our students about what we did during the trip. The workshop was about making recycling paper and recycling plastic bags into items.

The exploration was ended very very well, and now, I knew how to recycle things and not to use many plastics. Thanks for reading and visiting my portfolio. Have a nice day!