UNclean Plastics
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
The project addresses the topic of pollution caused by the pandemic and encourages a critical, creative debate.
The toothbrush is entirely 3D printed from “recycled mask filament”.
Choosing this rather complicated and difficult manufacturing process, shows the suitability of the material for other recycling approaches to be implemented in the future.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
The worldwide production and consumption of facemasks alone leads to an additional plastic waste of more than 584 million tons per year. With hardly any recycling efforts huge amounts of plastic waste are ending up in landfills and the oceans.
“Unclean Plastics” addresses this highly socially relevant topic and encourages a critical, creative debate about the current use of resources.
Specifically, the project focuses on the consumption and cycle chains of Covid 19 protective products such as FFP2 masks with the aim to not only create new approaches using additive production methods to reduce/recycle the resulting waste quantities but to also work on the psychological characteristics of those products through design intervention.
Key objectives for sustainability
One key objective of our project is to develop new recycled materials and ideas to implement them. It is important to prove the value of such recycled materials and show their potential use cases for other approaches.
There is a lacking awareness among a large part of the population that disposable masks are pure plastic waste after use, for which there are barely any recycling approaches so far.
The project focuses on addressing these topics tries to encourage a critical debate in order to achieve more public awareness for the existing pollution.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The monomaterial toothbrush was developed within the project as a symbolic product and is printed entirely using the recycled Polypropylene filament made from used and production waste masks.
Producing an everyday product such as a toothbrush entirely from recycled facemasks aims to create a strong contrast from contaminated waste to hygiene products. The confrontation is supposed to spark a debate on cleanness and disgust, as well as raising awareness about the use and value of resources.
Key objectives for inclusion
Masks as well as toothbrushes are daily used products. Everybody has them and uses them frequently. For that reason it is possible to reach many people with our project.
3D printing has become a very affordable and common manufacturing process during the last few years. Many people nowadays have their own 3D printer at home and are enabled to produce parts or entire products at their home by themself. Those people could use the developed recycled mask filament and take part in the idea.
Innovative character
Material research and the experimentation with different extrusion methods were a major part of the project. The production of consistent 3D printable filament represented a big challenge. We tested different mixtures with varying ratios of recycled polypropylene from used or production waste facemasks and pure polypropylene until we managed to manufacture filament made entirely from masks.
The 3D printing with the new filament required a lot of testing and overcoming of many problems to achieve good printing results.
