This project was led by Tim Slabolepszy and supported by myself in my role as the Head of the Department of Industrial Design at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in 2017. It was a project that extended out of Tim’s BA in Industrial Design in 2016.

Overview:

Precious Plastic is a global, open source movement aimed at enabling people anywhere to recycle plastic waste. The project was started by Dave Hakkens in the Netherlands and as a result, all components and machine parts were designed using components available there. Tim’s goal was to build these same machines using locally available standard components that were readily available in South Africa. South Africa has an extensive recycling culture, and by sharing tools that could transform plastic “waste” into new products, people could turn trash into cash. During 2017 Tim was appointed as a workshop technical assistant at UJ and during the year built an injection moulding machine, compression moulding machine and an adapted hand-cranked shredder. All the information, complications and methods used in their creation were shared on the Precious Plastic community forum.

Outcomes:

• Tim’s experience led him to work with a Maker Space in Bertrams, Johannesburg, called The Coloured Cube (unfortunately no longer operating) where he helped set up a small plastic recycling works space in their workshop.
• Then in November 2018, Tim was employed by Precious Plastic in Eindhoven, NL as part of a team of 40 over 18 months to work on version 4 (see more here).
• Tim’s Behance Portfolio
• Tim’s LinkedIn Profile
• Tim’s Precious Plastic Profile