Precious Plastic

You may already know about the problematics of plastic, but what you need to know in this case is that often, there are streams of plastic that are going to waste which we cannot see. These are what we call hidden plastic waste streams, and we will uncover these streams to turn the plastic into something new, but also to get you thinking. Precious Plastic offers students and employees alike a real local sustainability challenge to tackle. By building our own machines and letting students conduct research, while offering upcycled products, we want to encourage UU & HU community members to see opportunity instead of waste in plastic.

To learn more about the ‘why’ behind this project, and the research done on a hidden waste stream of Utrecht University, check out our first blog post.

How often do you hear about Utrecht University and Hogeschool Utrecht cooperating? Stakeholders from both institutions have valuable contributions to make to our precious plastic project.

In this cooperation, the know-how and resources of both institutions come together to deal with a shared problem. After all, waste knows no borders between the two institutions, so why should students and staff? With each side playing to their strengths, comes a better outcome. Research done by UU researchers on the plastic jerrycans being wasted by Utrecht University, and how to address it, gave this project its conceptual backing. On the other hand, Hogeschool Utrecht students will have the task of building the machines, making this project tangible.

Precious Plastic will not only involve both institutions, but also the varied stakeholders within them. With the involvement of student associations, scientists, designers, and operations staff, we aim to create real behavioural change.

Students are currently conducting research with interested stakeholders like the universities’ web-shops and study associations, to design the products that we will make. The first confirmed product is a beautiful plant pot, allowing students and staff to participate in the process and having a product to take home. We expect to start shredding plastic and producing products in early 2021. Study associations or committees who will shred their own collected plastic will be incentivized with huge discounts on the resulting products, giving them cool new branded merchandise.

Ultimately, as we work for the addition of more special recycling bins on campus, and less unnecessary plastic use, we hope to bring Utrecht Science Park into a future where the Precious Plastic project is no longer necessary. This would be a future where we use as little plastic as possible, and where we recycle or upcycle the plastic that we do use on a large scale.