Harvesting Waste Plastic In Emerging Economies As A Currency, To Reduce Pollution And Improve Lives
from the nothing-if-not-ambitious dept
The very best solutions not only come up with a brilliant answer to an important problem, but often manage to help address other issues too. Here's one that seems to fit that bill, pointed out to us by Izabella Kaminska. It's called Plastic Bank, and its core idea is to address the growing problem of plastic waste on the land and in the world's oceans and rivers, especially in poorer countries. But along the way, it might achieve much more. Here's the idea:The Plastic Bank is setting up plastic repurposing centers around the world, where there's an abundance of both waste plastic and poverty.Sounds too good to be true? Maybe it is -- it's evidently the early days for the project, so perhaps turning what seems a clever approach into a viable endeavor might prove to be difficult or even impossible. Still, it's good to see people daring to think big in this way, and working on things that matter -- rather than just launching another social network or iPhone app....
We are empowering people to harvest plastics as a currency they can exchange for tools, household items, parts & 3D printing.
Our mission is to remove plastic waste from the land, oceans and waterways while helping people ascend from poverty and transition into entrepreneurship.
The exchange process for our recycled "Social Plastic" improves the life of a disadvantaged person while cleaning our planet.
Our goal is to lead the movement towards worldwide demand for the use of Social Plastic in everyday products. The higher the worldwide demand becomes, the higher the reward will be for harvesting Social Plastic.
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Filed Under: plastic, plastic bank, pollution, reuse, waste plastic
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How is it economical?
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Re: How is it economical?
I think this could only work as a small incentive for the homeless to collect plastic waste.
Unless 3d printing make plastic recycling a big thing.
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This initiative may work if there's general acceptance and the government kicks in to give support. Without the Govt I suspect it won't survive for long.
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Really?
Their goal sounds noble the way they write it, but it seems mostly another way to sheer the government and the sheep at the same time.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_degradation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depolymeriza tion
Many plastics can be dissolved into their stockfeed forms, which is cheap, many other plastics return to their monomers after reaching a threshold temperature, solar furnaces could help produce those things on the cheap.
Fascinating subject really.
Here is an example.
Acetone will dissolve polystyrene foam.
http://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/polymers/default.aspx
The key here is to find new ways to do it cheap, most mass recycling projects use huge amounts of energy in a short period of time, there is probably a way to do it more slowly with others means and people bring the raw product to recycling centers to sell those raw materials already treated.
Some plastics can be reused over and over and over again, some need to be "reenergized" or depolymerized first, others can be used as feedstock for other purposes as fillings, fuels, sources of carbon etc.
I believe the success of the project will be related in how they manage to find uses for all that material, which won't be easy this is serious chemistry voodoo there, still I truly believe it can be done.
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See the US Army in Iraq use a huge open fire pit to burn trash(low temperature), they probably are sending a lot of American soldiers back home with respiratory problems, on the other hand you can burn trash at high temperatures and extract syngas, obsidian and other safe and inert subproducts from it.
This is exactly why I am exited to see hacker biolabs springing all over the world, they will produce the knowledge necessary for the public to achieve those things in a safe manner (hopefully).
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Plastic to fuel
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Sooo
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Re: Sooo
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Re: Sooo
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