RCX Development Point

After following Precious Plastic for over a decade, I finally joined as a Community member. Precious Plastic (aka PreshPlast or "PP") are a not for profit organisation enabling recycling projects in more than 1,200 locations around the world. I'm hoping that Wonthaggi will become another dot on their locations map.

PP have designed (and made available online for free) all manner of machines for processing plastic rubbish and making useful things from the recycled plastic.

RCX (at the moment, just me!) develop small inexpensive machines and techniques for turning waste plastic into useful things too - but RCX is working on making waste into specific stock raw materials like plastic flake, pellets, granules, and a variety of filament stock. This means that the machines that then turn this into a useful thing can all be built to use one of several well-known (and usually industry-standard, too) feedstocks, leading to a simpler design process for everything.

If you've looked at the locations map, you'll have noticed that we have two PP Hubs (facilities) at Clayton and Clayton South. I'm hoping that the RCX facility here will become another dot on the map but also a facility in its own right.

A few more people would definitely help. And that's where you could become involved.

So far, PP RCX (ReCycle eXtreme) is just me washing plastic and occasionally driving to Clayton when possible. But it could become so much more. You can contact me by email.

So - in order of need - here are things that we'd be grateful if you could help out with:

If you have an old but still useable container and a place to put it for a few years, or have a place where we can set up a container for several years, or a large shed / lockup unit / etc - as long as it has power and water available - that we can use long term, or any other suitable facility where we can sort, clean, and process plastic, please contact me.

If you're a food business (i.e. restaurant, cafe, take-away, or similar) or any other business that routinely has plastic waste, please contact me and we can discuss what and when and how. Raw materials are always welcome, the cleaner the better. Note that we can take plastic shopping bags, or any plastic that has a recycle triangle symbol on it - like plastic cooking oil or dish washing liquid containers and freezer tubs, etc. PLEASE NOTE: that we can't work with polystrene (white foam insulation) due to the dangerous fumes it releases in processing.

If you have some free time and want to do some good community volunteering, contact me. As we get more space and equipment there'll be a place for people to collect, sort, clean, and process plastic materials, help out with transporting to Clayton, and heaps more. We'll need PR people, people experienced in all aspects of community volunteering, contact, developing relationships, developing a plan, brainstorming, and more. There are places for everyone.

We do some limited processing of plastic with simple equipment like old panini presses, toaster ovens, even the odd washing machine for washing plastic, etc. And we can always use small hand tools and power tools, safety equipment such as cartdidge filter respirator masks, gloves, safety glases, workshop aprons, and so forth. Items such as fold-up trestle tables, maybe empty wool bale bags and frames, shelving. If you have anything like this to donate, please contact me.

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Please also check out more of
Precious Plastic and
One Army and
Project Kamp for more info on any of the multitude of projects that they're involved in. Maybe also check out the
Precious Plastic Bazar to see some of the things the member hubs produce.
Here's a link to the most common plastic recycle codes.

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While you're down here, some of the things I do -

I'm a retired disability pensioner and am doing this as a community project.

I also 3D print mask holders (in adult and child sizes, these new strains are dangerous for all ages) for taking the pressure of the straps of surgical masks off your ears, and I leave them in various places for people to just take if you need one. I'm always looking for places to leave them where the public can get them so if you know a place then - you know it - contact me. Also I make amusing and sturdy bookmarks, and a range of other stuff, much of which you can see on my online store.

My production capacity is limited, I only have one slow 3D printer, and if you have another one that you're not using and is gathering dust, (or not working, I'm happy to try fixing it up for myself to put to more good uses) I'll be glad to give it a home. Contact me if this is something you can do. It also costs me around $45 a spool of printing plastic by the time shipping is figured in, and a spool only makes a limited number of products.

If you'd like to help me buy another one, or contribute towards buying spools of 3D printing plastic for making more straps, you can always donate a few bucks towards those things by going to this link: Join me, help me, donate.

I'm also always working on development, and for this old printers (inkjet, laser, and 3D) are a great source of mechanical and electronic bits for creating new machines for recycling plastics. I strip them down and send what's left to e-waste recyclers. If you have any old printers etc please feel free to contact me.

Or come and visit my site and look around!

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Knowing which plastics we can accept:

Symbol	Name	Found in
	PET Polyethylene Terapthalate Harder To Process Used in 3D printing	Polyester fibers, soft drink bottles, food containers
	HDPE High Density PolyEthylene Good To Process	Plastic milk containers, plastic bags, bottle caps, trash cans, oil cans
	PVC PolyVinyl Chloride Toxic To Process	Window frames, bottles for chemicals, flooring, plumbing pipes
	LDPE Low Density PolyEthylene Good To Process	Plastic bags, Ziploc bags, buckets, squeeze bottles, plastic tubes, chopping boards
	PP PolyPropylene	Flower pots, industrial fibers, carry-out beverage cups, microwavable food containers, DVD cases
	PS PolyStyrene Toxic To Process	Toys, beverage/food coolers, beer wine and champagne cups, carry-out containers, Styrofoam
	O Other Often unsafe To Process	PC, PA, SAN, PAN, bioplastics, Generally a hassle to sort out
	ABS Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene Good To Process Used in 3D printing	Coffee makers, cell phones, calculators, computer plastic, Lego, and similar
	PLA PolyLactic Acid Good To Process Used in 3D printing	An exception to O - PLA is bioplastic that can be recycled, printed, and that breaks down readily under the right conditions.
	PA PolyAmide (Nylon) Harder To Process Used in 3D printing	Toothbrush bristles, socks, stockings, etc.

NOTE: As with ANY plastic recycling process, there are some conditions we need to satisfy:

• Ya gotta keep `em separated . . . Plastics that have glued-on labels take longer for us to process. Plastics that are dual (such as yoghurt containers with a seal of another plastic)need to be separated - eithr by you or by us. If you can help us by pulling them apart and putting them in the right containers that is already a HUGE step forward for us.
• The plastics we say we can`t process, we really can`t process. Please throw these out via the normal channels (usually hard waste) that`s appropriate. If you really only have a tiny amount of hard-waste-bound plastics, we might be able to come to an arrangement and take that too - as long as it's SEPARATELY STORED so we know not to waste time trying to identify it.
• We may be able to arange for containers to separate plastics into, and if so they`ll be clearly labelled as to what kind of plastic can go into which one, and we strongly urge you to use these as they make both our jobs easier.
• If the containers we supply (if we can spare them and you really have a need for us to supply containers) prove to be too small for the task, contact us, we may be able to come and collect them more often, or supply larger containers.
• This said, we're a volunteer organisation, and many of us are strapped for cash, so coming out multiple times a week costs a lot of fuel. Until someone donates an electric vehicle we can use, we're going to try and save money, and save pollution, by visiting as few times as possible. (Without of course inconveniencing your operations.)
• I'm going to say it again - the plastics that have a line of red text in the list, we can't touch because of how toxic they are to process. Any in orange are difficult to process so while we might be able to collectr them, there's no guarantee that we'll be able to pass them up the chain to anyone for recycling.
• The one variation to that last point is if we get a large donation / grant / gift that see us in a fair sized premises with threephase power and water, and enough working capital to make the recycling machines ourselves, because then we can process some of those diffficult materials in situ.
• We really mean it when we say that every dollar is valuable to us in this project. And every thing that can be made cheaper in terms of money, time, or effort for us is of inestimable value. But it'll result in a cleaner district, access to recycled things rather than buying ever more virgin plastic, and if more localities take after us and do the same, a dramatic decrease in plastic pollution worldwide.

 

Come and visit my site and look around - there is a heap more information on plastics, recycling, things that we can do with recycled materials, and links to even more that can be either bought from other facilities, or we can build the machines and make the product locally.

Do contact me if there's anything you'd like to discuss, and we can arrange a Zoom meeting or even a meetup over a cuppa - with myself or another representative of the community hub.