A few months ago we shared the problems that Precious Plastic is facing. Read it here. In short: The project is at a pivotal point where we either find a way for it to continue or die. A breaking point.

In the video below we will show you what happened after that and what is next for Precious Plastic. Would recommend to watch it to get a full overview. That said everything is also written in this article going more in depth and you can leave comments below.  
Watch video that explains it all 👇

What happened after sharing our problems?
First of all thank you for all the positive replies and support. Positive reactions are a great motivation. But we needed more than that. We needed to understand what comes next. What is the role of Precious Plastic, should we do something to get out or perhaps we achieved our mission and that's it and it can die. So we went back to the roots of why this project started. 

Back to the mission
In 2013, when the project started, less than 10% of plastic got recycled. Even though it can be recycled, most goes to burn, landfill or ocean. We set out a goal to reduce plastic waste. So we developed machines, moulds, products and built an entire plastic recycling network so people around the world can recycle their plastic waste. And they do, millions of KG of plastic have been recycled in over 50 countries around the world thanks to these Open Source tools. Great.

Did we achieve it?
Here we are. 12 Years later looking up the latest data from 2024.
Still less than 10% of our plastic is recycled :|

But there is a deeper layer to this. Even though we still recycle less than 10% of plastic, the amount of recycled plastic in KG did actually increase. Because we produced more plastic. 

Above you can see a graph showing the plastic produced per year.
As you can see in the blue bars, the production continues to go up each year. 
The little green blocks show the amount recycled that year (>10%).
As you can see the green block in 2024 is larger than 2014. (6.4 Million tons larger to be accurate)
Meaning we still recycle less than 10%, but more KGs of plastic per year.
Which simultaneously also means we produce more and waste more.
On top of this its projected that the production of plastic will continue to go up in the coming decades . In the Netherlands we say “mopping with the tap open”.

Plastic Challenges in 2025

The projection above of a growing amount of plastic doesn’t look too good to us.
Here is what we see as the main problems for Plastic recycling in 2025:

#1 Recycling is a tough job to keep up.
As mentioned in the previous problems video it’s not easy to run this global recycling network. Being able to financially sustain plastic recycling is hard. But we need people collecting, shredding and recycling day in day out. (Next time you see a Precious Plastic workspace in your area, give them a piece of chocolate ;)

#2 We don’t recycle enough plastic
Realistically plastic will continue to be in our lives for a while. We are probably (hopefully) able to skip a lot of useless plastic crap in the short term. But some plastic has essential functions to power our modern world. Water tubes, electronics, car parts, electric cables etc. We need a robust recycling infrastructure that can handle this.  An extra problem with this is that most of the plastic that we currently recycle are two types:  PET, HDPE and often in a pretty clean state. But there are many more, hundreds of plastic types and variations that don’t have a recycling infrastructure yet so they won’t be recycled anytime soon.

#3 We need less plastic
There will always be a need for a mouldable material like plastic for many more years to come. We need natural replacements that can integrate back in nature. That said it’s not an easy mission to replace the properties of plastic and will take lots of research, development and time to integrate. 

What’s next?

With all of this said. We see our mission far from completed and much more work to be done to tackle the plastic waste issue. 

So we made a plan for Version 5. 
It’s divided into 3 phases.
Phase 1 - Sustain recycling
Phase 2 - Increase recycling
Phase 3 - Develop alternatives

Phase 1 - Sustain recycling

Our first step is to make sure the current Precious Plastic network can sustain itself financially. We will develop tools that bring income to recyclers and the organisation itself so we can keep recycling day in and out for years to come.

Projects inside this phase:

Impact sales - Bring corporate resources to small scale recyclers
All together the Precious Plastic network recycles a large amount of plastic and creates many jobs (see our impact data). Which is great, but plastic recycling is still a tough business. However more and more companies and organisations are looking for ways to offset their impact. Carbon credits is a known method for this, but 'Plastic Credits' are rising in popularity. We want to bring the impact from the Precious Plastic community together, verify the data, make it presentable and establish partnerships with organisations to fund it. This allows more money to flow towards the plastic recyclers around the world and makes the job more compelling.

Marketplace - Help to make recycling tools & materials accessible
To recycle plastic, people need the right tools. The easier they are to access, the more likely people are to start. That’s why we developed open-source machines, built a network of makers, and launched the Bazar (marketplace for recycling equipment). It helps users get started, supports community income, and brings income to Precious Plastic. Our goal now is to upgrade and reposition the Bazar as the go-to marketplace for plastic recycling tools and materials.

Product - Help selling recycled plastic products
Each Precious Plastic product sold is a win for all. But we also noticed that selling products is hard for our community members. Especially if they need to compete with (new plastic) products from large corporations with big marketing budgets. We want to step in and push product sales by using our global brand. Find the best products, set up an online store, develop strong branding and start selling and shipping. Help our community to sell their products. Because each item sold means plastic recycled but also income for the recyclers involved.

Memberships - Help make the community resilient
Precious Plastic is a community. People from all around the world want to fix the plastic waste problem. We truly believe in the power of people coming together. By now we are one of the largest Open Source hardware communities in the world. It’s quite hard to find funding for this growing community. Having community members pay a monthly fee in exchange for something useful. As this puts our incentives in the right place.
1) We want to increase the amount of people recycling plastic thus get more members.
2) We need to continuously provide something useful back to the community. A very pure and scalable way to grow a community. We already start to roll it out NOW for workspace and improve it overtime.

The goal of each project is to develop it to a state that they can at least financially sustain themselves. And ideally generate extra that can sustain the rest of the organisation. 

If you would like to help with this. You can sign up on our job page, you can see more details and open positions there. From web design, to community managers and running partnerships. Sign up on this page to help build it.  

Phase 2 - Increase recycling

Once we make sure the recycling network can sustain itself we will increase the amount of plastic recycled by developing new recycling methods and updating the core of Precious Plastic. This will make it easier for new people to start and upgrade all the existing recyclers with new information and tools. Resulting into more plastic being recycled in a better way.

Youtube - Boost videos
Precious Plastic started on just a bunch of Youtube videos. It’s been a great tool to reach people, share knowledge and try new recycling techniques. We are experienced with the topic but stopped doing it after we had to leave our workspace. We want to restart it,  get a workspace with machines and moulds and start making videos. Review machines, try moulds and test new recycling techniques. Basically become the main channel for everything about Plastic recycling.

Remake the core
The Academy is the core of Precious Plastic. It’s the place everyone is guided step by step with video tutorials videos to set up your own recycling workspace. Everyone in the Precious Plastic network started here. The better the information we share, the better the community is prepared. That said lots of content there is outdated from 2016 and 2020. By now we and the community learned much more and developed new machines and improvements that need to be documented. This means +40 in depth educational videos that help new people to become a recycler and help existing ones to scale and professionalise. 

New ways to recycle 
Most of the plastic recycled on industrial scale is PET and HDPE, however there are many other types of plastic out there which are not recycled. It’s either too complex, too little available or no access to the right recycling tools. Precious Plastic works on a smaller scale which allows us to process these. Foils, 3D print waste, plexiglass etc. We want to develop new techniques and tools so people around the world can start processing this.

Reposition Precious Plastic
This version will professionalise all our tools and infrastructure. Build a steady team that can sustain the organisation. Put us in service of the community. Have more connections with buyers and large companies. This means a big update on our website to integrate all these updates properly and positions ourselves clearly towards the world.

Phase 3 - Develop alternatives

As we upgrade the network for more plastic to be recycled we will start exploring plastic alternatives. Using more natural materials that can dissolve in nature. It will be a large multi year research. We will layout the basic foundation for a community so the R&D can continue globally.

Research new tools and materials
We started this as a side project during Version 4 with a ‘Beyond Plastic’ project. Trying to find biodegradable materials that we can mould into shapes like plastic, but will dissolve in nature afterwards. The techniques, moulds and machines are very similar to the processes of Precious Plastic. We will do a large material research, develop example products and the tools to replicate it for others.

Develop the documentation
An essential part of this process is being Open Source. This material research is a whole new terrain to explore with lots more R&D to be done for years to come. Our goal is to lay the educational base that can get people around the world started and continue to build upon. Making educational videos, blueprints, 3D models etc.

Setup the community
By now we know a bit what it takes to start and run a global community. We actually build our own software so we can easily replicate the community tools for it. We will provide people the information and infrastructure to continue R&D in this area and together build a library of plastic alternative examples.

Funding

As you can see lots of work to be done. It’s important that the phases are developed in this order as they build on top of each other. Each phase has a cost.
Phase 1 - 400K
Phase 2 - 700K
Phase 3 - 900K

Total budget required to develop the entire Version 5 = €2.000.000
We’re set up as a non-profit in the Netherlands, so literally all money would go towards development. Workspace, salaries, materials, tooling etc.  On top of that we work with many volunteers and contributors around the world which is quite cost effective. We will publish a yearly report in full transparency so you can see how all the money was spent. We are confident we can deliver the work. However finding the funding is hard for us. But more about that in the challenges below.

Leadership change

After sharing in full transparency all our problems we got some good critical feedback on how things went down. This thread on hackernews gives a good public insight on them. Many are questioning the choices made by the leadership, as for instance giving money to the community while being an financially unstable organisation.

We agree. For this we made some changes as well. Previous leadership is gone and Dave is stepping back in after being away from the day to day work since version 4 in 2020. He has experience and led the other versions of Precious Plastic successfully with minimal resources and will develop Version 5. Meanwhile we are also looking to strengthen the leadership team that can continue the course of the foundation in the long term.

Lets do it. Version 5

That’s the entire plan for Version 5. We’re excited to develop it and know it will have a big impact in the world, as it will be the biggest version we develop so far. There are two main challenges we need to overcome now.

1. Assembling the team
Currently we are a small team. We need to scale up our team again. We particularly need the ones that can hold responsibility and really go for it. We made a page with an overview of all the open positions. Want to help out or know someone who does? Sign up here!

2. Find (large) funding
We built 4 other versions before. We are strong in development, not fundraising. You might think we have a big community with many people so it’s easy. Well not really… 2 Million is a lot to fund for a non-profit organization and community of plastic recyclers. We need all the help we can get.  Workspaces please become PRO and people please donate. The more support we receive the more likely we will be able to access larger funding.

How you can help

• Make a donation on this page
• Sign up the help out developing it here
• If you’re a workspace become PRO
• Help us reach beyond our own bubble. (Please spread the word!)
• If you work at a large organisation show this campaign to your boss.

⭐️ BONUS⭐️

We prefer to not spend our time campaigning and fundraising but developing solutions. It can take months or years to reach the goal. The fastest way forward is having support from large donors daring to take a risk on us. So please reach out if you are able to help out and accelerate everything.

Ok that’s it.
To summarize:
We have a plan for Version 5.
You can help to build or fund it.

Join us in building the largest recycling community in the world!