Precious Plastic: One Year at V4

Precious Plastic is an open-source community that designs new solutions to tackle plastic waste.

Precious
adjective
of high price or great value; very valuable or costly.

Plastic
noun
A material consisting of any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic compounds that are malleable and can be molded into solid objects.

I heard about Precious Plastic while attending a retreat in 2018. For a few years prior I had been working in various projects in sustainability in the previous years, mostly in textiles and production, and at the retreat I found myself surrounded by people working in ocean and community health. A friend asked me, “Have you heard of Precious Plastic? They are a bunch of hackers and activists, designers and machine builders. They’re making machines to recycle plastic and then putting the plans online for free so everyone can do it. There’s already over 200 small plastic recycling hubs run by community members all over the world. Mongolia, Iceland, New Zealand... They’re awesome!” The question came from Linzi Hawkin, who runs the plastic-free community project in the Jersey Islands. She recently commissioned some Precious Plastic machines, which she put in the back of a van, and now uses them as educational tools at schools and events.

I was intrigued. I love innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, especially when the thinkers are a group of people fed up of waiting for governments to listen: plastic pollution is a world-wide crisis, and is contributing significantly to the collapse of the climate. Yet, all around us we were seeing business as usual. Not the Precious Plastic community – they had become an inspiring global movement of environmental hactivists.

As any normal millennial would do, I followed them on Instagram and a few months later, I saw an open-call for people to join them in what they were calling Version 4. In a 30 second video, Precious Plastic founder Dave Hakkens explained that they had won a 300,000 euro grant to develop the fourth generation of the plastic-recycling machines. While this might have been the first opportunity for him to pay himself and a small team a salary to do so, instead he dreamed up something bigger. Imagine if this money could be used to provide some essentials: a big workspace, food, accomodation, heating (ahem: Dutch winter), and the materials and tools needed to develop the machines. This money could then be used to support and house not 6 people, but 60. Or more. And instead of just developing the machines, they could also develop new business models, ways to run a larger scale recycling workspace, new product designs, and an online platform to nurture and grow the community. This dream was perfect for the type of people that were part of the Precious Plastic community, and it is in turn what made it so successful. On the outside, it looked like Hakkens was asking people to come and work for free. But on the inside, he provided the solid and simple foundation we needed to really make a dent in the world. He was speaking to people who already believed that there were uses for their skills and time more urgent than simply maximizing their earnings; he was talking to people who knew that if money was the only reason they contributed towards something, the world would be full of Facebooks and Googles. And there were already enough of those. So, I applied - as did about 500 other people.They were asking for machine builders, robotic engineers, product designers, front- and back-end developers, digital designers, vegan chefs, co-ordinators. I hopped on the phone a few days later with a guy named Mattia and a few weeks later, he asked if I’d like to come down in October.

I had no idea what to expect. I knew that I’d be designing the community platform but I didn’t know much more than that, I’d never been to Eindhoven, they hadn’t sorted out housing and there really wasn’t much information. I had told them I would come down for 3 months, possibly stay 6, but I wanted to feel into it before I over-committed myself. So I packed my bags and left my apartment in a small seaside Portuguese town, and I headed for Eindhoven: a southern Dutch city with just over 200,000 people. Looking it up online, I read “if you find yourself here, it’s probably in transit due to the cheap airport, or to watch a football game.” Awesome.

I arrived late at night with some vague directions to a workspace and a promise that someone would be up to greet me. It was cold and raining, I remember seeing the Precious Plastic sign with an arrow under the streetlight and heading in, opening the metal door that led into a pretty dark place. A light illuminated a few people gathered in the kitchen, and as soon as they saw me standing in the doorway, they came over. I was greeted warmly in hushed voices, and faces barely lit in the darkness.. It turned out that there were a few people sleeping in the workspace, and so I was shown out the back where I could sleep. This was a very dark window-less area which was for food storage and as a “shut up room”. A tall Ukranian vegan chef called Jeger offered to make me a cup of tea, and - feeling relieved that people were nice - I accepted the tea and chatted a bit before I collapsed into the space out back.

The first day was a whirlwind. I met Mattia in person, an energetic quirky Italian guy who had been with Precious Plastic since Version 2 and was co-running the whole project in Version 4. He let me know that the houses still weren’t organised, but they had a plan in the interim:most of the people were biking 45 minutes to the old Precious Plastic workspace and sleeping out there, and some were staying in a chalet about 25 minutes away. I was in the chalet. I can’t remember if I was more grateful that it was closer or that it sounded warmer. I met Dave, who started Precious Plastic years back as a university project. It was Dave’s determination and vision that had turned the project into a global movement. He was actually pretty shy, not like how he seems in his films. He seemed genuinely surprised, and grateful, that people came. He is humble and soft spoken and basically an introvert, which - given that he had just invited 40 people to come and be in his space, for a year - took me by surprise.

Precious Plastic V4 sat in a huge 3000sq metre workspace which the municipality had ceded to the project for one year. It had a studio and a big space downstairs to sit, work, and hang out, as well as a workspace upstairs where the digital team made their home. There was the kitchen, and beyond this, most of it was basically a big open space. There was a showroom area to display all the current end products that were being made by Precious Plastic machines (in V4 but also the community), a dining area, and a huge space for machine development. The workspace had 15-metre-high ceilings, made from metal and glass, and the whole thing was concrete. This is to say that it was totally freezing. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were served daily, all vegan food, with a near-zero-waste philosophy. I remember sitting down for my first lunch there. I sat next to a guy who told me that he had just spent 2 years in Bhutan teaching the monks how to use a 3D printer. He told me that it was so cold there in the winter that he would have to melt ice and heat water for at least an hour before he could wash himself in the morning, and how much he loved Precious Plastic. Jason was his name and he was working on a new machine, the Sheet Press, a hydraulic press that would make large sheets from recycled plastic.

The early days at Precious Plastic V4 were wonderful. There was an incredible energy and I was so inspired to be surrounded by so many people that believed in a different way of living and contributing to the world. Yes, there was a level of privilege at work: these people could afford to forego most income while they were here. But this privilege didn’t necessarily come from previously well-paying jobs, or family money. Many members of the team found this freedom from the realization that you actually didn’t need a lot of money to live. Living in a small town where there wasn’t much to do (which, admittedly, creates different problems) and with Precious Plastic paying for food, bills, accommodation and transport, we found ourselves entertaining one another: with community, time in nature, and side projects in the workspace. Some weeks it was hard to even spend 20 euro: you just didn’t need money there. What inspired me about this big social experiment was that it was like living with basic income. If Precious Plastic paid us enough to purchase the things that they provided, it might equal around 1000 euro per month (give or take). But of course, in our society we aren’t paid equal, so immediately there would have been a hierarchy. There would have more about what you get from something rather than what you can give, and entitlement creeps in. But with this structure, everyone can contribute with their skills equally and receive the same. We had robotic engineers next to vegan chefs, developers next to machine builders, fashion designers next to community coordinators. It was an opportunity to do what basic income provides: giving back to the community, contributing to the larger group, outside of what our individualistic society has been laying down on us all this time.

We started to get houses after a few weeks: they were becoming available one by one. In the Netherlands there is something called “antikraak” housing. Roughly, this refers to anti-squatting policies, and basically amounts to paying a very low rent to be the live-in guardian or custodian of a vacant (or soon-to-be-developed) property. We formed some house groups et voila! Our house was ready for us to move in. The houses were basic: some bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living area. Actually they looked a lot like the flats I lived in my early 20s: a little run down, bare, but liveable. We had heating and electricity (but no light fittings) and I remember being so excited the first time I turned the key in the door to see my new house, only to find that because I was there at night I couldn’t actually see anything. We had 6 houses all within the same block, surrounded by some Dutch families, Turkish immigrants and many empty houses. Each house was given 250 euro to furnish the whole place, and it was bare. I was living with Benj, the French developer; Nico, the French designer; Paul, the American product designer; and DJ, the American community “fun guy.” We bought a cooker, some light fittings, some stuff for the kitchen, some bedding. It’s amazing how little 250 euro buys - but fortunately, we were in a community of makers and thrifters: on Marketplaats (the dutch Craigslist) we found a fridge, beautiful table-top and chairs for free. We made a couch, shelves and storage. Paul even built a room. Nico pulled up the concrete slabs in the back yard and begun his permaculture experiment, and by summertime we had enough tomatoes and kale to feed us every day.

In the winter we started dumpster diving. Because I’ve been working in sustainability for many years, I consider myself to be slightly informed about our waste and consumption problem, our lack of policy or action when it comes to manufacturing, and our rudimentary linear economy. I know a lot about the problems faced by communities and the environment when plastic is burned, buried and sent to the ocean. I don’t back down easily as I have found that part of my life’s work is to help others see what (environmentalists) see. So, I consider myself environmentally woke. But nothing could have prepared me for the night we got on our bikes, rode in the freezing cold for about 40 minutes under the quiet streetlights, and arrived at the back entrance of a supermarket distribution centre. The huge plastic containers were piled on top of each other, each weighing a few hundred kilos. Dave said they put empty ones on top so it’s very hard for people like us to get to the goods. It was like a puzzle: you have 5 people, 2 towers of 5 containers stacked on top of each other, and some wooden crates. How do you get to the food? Well, we managed. We used the wooden crates and somehow pulled the top two off and opened the lid. I’ll never forget the feeling: it was like delight and disgust at the same time. Delight that we did it, and look at all the free stuff! It was completely full of everything you could imagine, and was all random. There were black rubbish bags of bread, and plastic bags of vegetables: kale from the Netherlands, tomatoes from Spain, potatoes from Germany. There were all sorts of dairy in there: milk, yoghurt, cheese -so much cheese! - French, Dutch and English. There was a box of figs from Portugal. There were oysters, mussels, clams and fillets of fish, all wrapped in plastic. Then I was heartbroken: there was meat. Chicken, beef, sausages, cured meats. Of course all wrapped in plastic. An animal had to live and suffer through the shameful industry of factory farming, be wrapped in plastic from oil, shipped by plane, ship or truck, and arrive in a small city in Europe to be thrown away? The waste was mindless. I felt sick. Everything was in this one box, all together. All of this would be dumped in its plastic, and nothing would decompose properly. And this was just one night in November, in one small city of 200,000 people. The relatively small amount even there twisted my stomach in knots. What about the rest of the Netherlands? The rest of Europe? The rest of the world? This is not an isolated case of “oops, we ordered too much and people didn’t buy it.” It is a business model: we allow over 30% of our food to be wasted, and the companies that produce it, and the supermarkets, still bring in huge profits.

So, we continued getting as much from the dumpster as possible. I remember making guacamole, and the French crew loved all the cheese - it was still good, by the way. The amount of plastic in the dumpster made my eyes water (remember that oil is a finite resource) but we rescued as much as we could. We also started going to the Saturday markets, like a farmers market, and asking the stall sellers at the end if they had anything that they were going to throw out. It turns out they did. A whole bunch. We once got 300 punnets of blueberries (that’s over 1000 euros worth) and yes, it took a while to sort through and pull out the mouldy ones, but we had glorious blueberry jam for weeks. Dave made a film about this.

So how did the year go? Well, we lived well among each other. The machine builders were busy building new machines to be released in October: the global community was watching eagerly, and contributing where they could and sharing their findings. The machines that were being developed in V4 had the potential to really compete with the industry level, but could be built in a garage. The product designers were busy figuring out new products - chairs, shelves, beams to be used in construction. We even had Rory from Recycle2Build develop a plastic brick with a low-skill approach, meaning that we could use this in low income areas and developing countries, where plastic is piling high and causing huge damage to human and ecosystem health. We had our robotics engineer develop a lower-cost robot to sort plastic, and the team I was working with were building a community platform to host all of our user generated content: “How-To” documentation from our whole community, a map to find local Precious Plastic workspaces or collection points, and an events area to make sure we do as much offline as we do online. We spent our days working hard and being fed nutritious, low-impact vegan food (we even voted on whether certain foods were worth the miles they travelled, and almonds were voted out) and we cleaned up after ourselves - yep, no cleaners. During the cold nights in winter we would have “discussion nights” - topics that might feel controversial, challenging or unanswerable: whether or not to have children, the lack of agency in society, re-imagining utopia. We questioned everything: the way we lived, spent money, educated ourselves, ate food, consumed, spoke. For me, it was an opportunity to pull apart the constructs within which I had been socialized, to examine my upbringing and the society in which I was taking part, viewing these ways of being as if from a distance. To be able to see our deeply damaging culture of consumption, and our hyper-individualistic society, with even more clarity. To understand that we were never taught to see the downstream effects of our actions and that - while it’s not our fault that we were brought up this way - it is now our chance to say that we don’t want to live like that anymore. To realize that most people really don’t want to live like that - and given real information plus the power to make choices, most people would do differently. The people who surrounded me were working to bring about the changes they wished to see in the world - experimenting with their own lives, to discover how such changes might happen - and not just talking about it. Sure, we would have mind-expanding conversations over breakfast - but then the conversations took form in our actions. I lived and worked every day with people who taught me how to see, live, love, eat, and consume. We were a living and breathing organism, parts of a whole. The natural ease of community life made me feel that this was the way it was supposed to be. This is the way it was, once upon a time, before our individualism - and our self-contained nuclear families that are a scant extension of the individual - became so much the norm that we can barely conceive of other ways of being. This time the community was for a purpose, it seems possible that nothing quite like this has ever happened. These hundred people came together as a community for more than a year in a collaboration aimed specifically at trying to solve the waste problem, through the development of machines, tools, education, resources and technology - and eventually, releasing everything online for free. The partnerships, collaborations and projects to be born from this year are extraordinary: we’ve had some very talented, experienced and ambitious people walk through those metal workspace doors, all with a clear vision of how they think they could redesign systems, products and services. We weren’t the ones with dollar signs in our eyes, or dreams of hypergrowth, or obligations to shareholders eclipsing our view of the common good. We wanted to change direction, to steer the ship toward regeneration in our communities and our eco-systems, and we put our own lives onto the front line: we began with ourselves. Together we are not only tackling plastic, but sustainable living, fashion, biodegradable materials, the internet, large scale industrial waste and pollution in developing countries. But not only these grandiose dreams of better, regenerative systems and more connected relationships with our environment. Oh, and just for good measure, we also made a van sauna. Our shitty Sprinter van transformed from a vehicle transporting material to the dumpster, to a beautiful hot sauna in the Belgian countryside on New Years Eve. That might be our most-wanted “How-To” of the year.

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So what’s next? Well, we spent the 300,000 euro. We’re previewing everything at Dutch Design Week at the end of October (and launching in 2020) and I don’t think any of us will forget the year living in what I can only describe as a sustainability commune. The next few years of Precious Plastic are going to be its most important yet: the project still continues and now is only funded by the wonderful supporters of Patreon. Please consider donating!