Collaborate Disseminate
A group of scientists studying the flow of plastic into the ocean have found a startling amount of pollution exiting South Asia’s largest river systems. The scientists calculated that the Ganges and two nearby waterways are responsible for pumping as m… Continue reading Ganges river carrying billions of plastic particles into ocean each day
The next time you find yourself in need of some large-ish plastic springs, maybe consider [PattysLab]’s method for making plastic springs out of spare filament. The basic process is simple: tightly wind some 3D printer filament around a steel rod, secure it and wrap it in kapton tape, then heat …read more
Continue reading Heat Turns 3D Printer Filament into Springs
As useful as plastics are in our everyday life, they’re difficult to recycle, meaning most ends up in landfill or polluting the environment. Now, researchers in Japan have used a novel catalyst to recycle a common plastic into useful products like fuel… Continue reading New catalyst converts common plastic waste into fuels and wax
While 3D printing has now become easily accessible and cheap, there are still several use cases where you need the advantages offered by injection molding, even for small batch runs. Professional small-batch injection molding can be pretty expensive, and buying a manual machine can cost quite a bit. Of course, …read more
A team at UC Berkeley has developed a process that turns plastic waste into something more valuable – an adhesive. Based on an engineered catalyst, the inspiration was to find ways to “upcycle” plastics by putting them to new uses while preserving the … Continue reading New process upcycles plastic waste into a more valuable adhesive
Microplastics are starting to turn up in all kinds of places, from the heights of Mount Everest, to the sea ice in the Antarctic, to the organs and tissues of the human body. In an effort to better understand how these tiny fragments of plastic are abs… Continue reading Waterborne microplastics grow bio-coatings to sneak into living cells
Making plastic materials out of biomass instead of crude oil and natural gas offers a number of environmental benefits, but these so-called bioplastics tend to underperform in a few key areas. Scientists at the University of Akron may have found a solu… Continue reading Durable new bioplastic can hold boiling liquids
The more we know about the problem of plastic pollution, the better we’ll be able to intervene and clean up, or even prevent, the mess. That includes understanding the way it moves through the marine environment, and a new study has shed further light … Continue reading Tagged plastic bottles reveal the path of plastic through the ocean
Many people have the means now to create little plastic objects thanks to 3D printing. However, injection molding is far less common. Another uncommon tech is plastic recycling, although we do occasionally see people converting waste plastic into filament. [Manuel] wants to solve both of those problems and created an …read more
The Futuro is an exceedingly rare UFO-like home that has gained cult status since its construction back in the 1960s. If you’ve always wanted to live in a proto-tiny house that looks like something from The Jetsons, you may be in luck as a model has co… Continue reading Rare out-of-this-world Futuro house lands on New Zealand marketplace