The most durable plastics products, such as bottles can take 450 years to biodegrade, most end up in land fills or worse into the oceans where they are consumed by marine life and ultimately by us down the line. Plastic waste is a huge problem for both the developing and developed world, therefore it is important to take responsibility to recycle and repurpose plastic waste. A simple plastic bottle cap is more than its function; a material with innate potential to be something else.
There has been a buzz in the atmosphere around the RUET campus as it is a national holiday today, celebrating Bangladesh’s Interdependence from Pakistan on the 25 March 1971, by the undisputed leader and Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
On this this day we also decided to start a project here at RUET to inspire a community of students to create systems to recycle, repurpose and make their own products out of plastic waste. Calling this initiative ‘Mission Plastic’, we called out to the RUET students to come along to a presentation and join the conversation about recycling plastic in Bangladesh.
A total of 15 students came to the talk, interested in participating in the development of products with recycled plastics. Our presentation introduced the Deltap Project with an explanation of why plastic waste should be recycled, followed by an explanation of the machines. Two machines will be delivered, one plastic shredder and one plastic extruder, which will be assembled and placed in the Civil Engineering Faculties workshop on the campus. Lucky for us all the students are studying engineering related courses and were also keen to support us in assembling the Precious Plastic’s machines.
In the run up to this event we have been trying to collect raw material to experiment with once the machines arrive, with the support of our big brother (borobuy) Tonmoy Ahmed we created posters, which are accompanied with a bag to collect HDPE plastic caps. This was enough to peek the interest of the students who came to the event, from now on it is in their hands to push the plastic recycling movement in RUET and beyond. Our main aim was to get the students inspired enough to make a group and share information about recycling plastic, create some systems of recycling and ultimately collect plastic for themselves to make products with the two machines. We believe we have been successful! :)
A facebook group has been created to support the initiative and share content related to recycle and Precious Plastics machines:
https://web.facebook.com/groups/880376285629272/