Stuff You Don't Need

But It's Nice To Have 

Something I've said - start with a flat sandwich press like a panini press - is bull. I know I said it's the machine to start with but I started with an iron, an ordinary electric clothes iron, and a cotton teatowel that had seen better days, and some plastic bread bags, some stray bits of 3D printing filament, and baking paper. Start with anything.

I don't even have pictures it was so much an off the cuff experiment. I arranged the filament strands to frame a piece of bread bag with a neat design on it, covered them with two layers of baking paper, and ironed them into the fabric. It worked, and it didn't look half bad, but it would have been too stiff for clothing which is what I was trying to achieve, appliques for clothing to give them another crack at life.

It did give me a few more ideas though. not that I can follow through just yet because I can't really afford to spend money on an A3 laminator that I'm going to modify heavily or destroy in the process. But it would make tough plastic/textile laminate that could be used for waterproof cladding or making enclosures or boxes or storage crates.

I've used hairdryers and hot air guns to shape plastic around things I've built, as waterproofing and bump protection, and I've used a 3D pen to repair broken plastic items and join parts together.

And when I can afford to get one of those desktop mini ovens I'll also be able to make castings with waste plastics. Later, when I have time to make a decent press, I can make harder castings and when / if I can turn that to another use, plastic injection molds and objects. 

The Exhortation:

Look - you can start with the sandwich press and two pieces of BBQ heat shield cloth and some oven mitts. You can start with a clothes flatiron and some baking paper. But you CAN start pretty much now. 

Learn the types of plastics and then think: HDPE and PP can be re-used by chopping it up and then using the sandwich maker or the flatiron, LDPE can also be done the same way. (NOT together - you need to keep your plastics separated into types - here I'm going to suggest chipping your plastics quite small, cutting open 2litre and 3litre milk jugs and storing the plastics in different jugs according to type - and if you desire, colour as well - and then you can experiment to your heart's content.)

Plastic drink, milk jugs, and other tops are generally 5-PP or 2-HDPE, bottles are usually 1-PET and nut easy to deal with using kitchen appliances, and must bread bags / toilet roll bags, and similar are 4-LDPE. The numbers are the number you'll find in the recycling triangle symbols usually (hopefully!) stamped on most plastics these days. 

SAFETY

3-PVC, 6-PS, and a lot of 7-Other plastics are either too toxic to safely process with limited equipment, require more heat than we can apply, and release toxic fumes when heated. And in general I advise you to avoid them until you've got some experience under your belt and done more research.

Don't steal yer Mum's sandwich/jaffle maker to do these things - plastics can leach chemicals that you probably don't want to ingest along with your next ham'n'cheese toastie. 

Only work in a well-ventilated space and if possible with a powered charcoal filter fume extractor. (This one from IKEA doesn't come with the charcoal filter as standard but you can buy those here. And these air purifiers will as a side benefit also pull COVID virus out of the air in your work area.) We have two of them because of these reasons. I also use mine to pull soldering fumes away from me when I'm doing electronics. 

Plastic is a bit like napalm - it not only stores heat and burns, it sticks and that can cause nasty burns. Use oven mitts at the very least, and silicon mitts if you can get them. You have been warned.

The BBQ sheets I'm talking about are generally 20x35ish pieces of shiny black cloth sold as BBQ sheets and meant to be placed on the BBQ to either keep IT clean or keep your food clean, but I'd never use one because the aforementioned volatile compounds (fumes) will be released at around 300C and your BBQ can easily reach that without you knowing. But perfect for keeping plastic from sticking to your toastie maker or flatiron.

Future

In future, time allowing, I'll be developing a few more uses for common equipment and devices, plus a few ways to make inexpensive machines for more complex processes. I'm always looking for collaborators and people wanting to take on some of this research or do some writing on this or one of the other blogs (all for raising public awareness and disseminating information) I have a contact form in the footer below. It's all voluntary but then again I've been doing this on a pension for several years now, and who knows, one day this kind of work may be valued for what it's worth...

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In addition to writing these articles I'm also experimenting with ways of recycling waste that can be done at the cottage industry or community hub levels, not so much because it'll magically convert 100% of local waste into recycled useful articles, but because people who are doing these sorts of activities are likely to talk about them to people in their community, and so raise even more awareness of the issues and dangers.

So please - if you can at all spare some time, take a look at my News Stand where you'll see live updated links to everything I publish; And take some time and share the links to the News Stand and this article with your friends and readers. 

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All donations are put towards keeping these websites online, and for developing devices, machines, and techniques to easily and safely recycle materials on a tiny scale.