Precious Plastic is in trouble
This is the first time I’m hearing about “Precious Plastic”, so my comment is entirely based on this one article.
The real problem here is that they are lacking a clear and well articulated roadmap.
If we give them money, what will they use it for? Will they make new opensource tool designs which has bigger capacity? Easier to maintain? Or smaller and easier to manufacture? Or safer by design? Or lower energy? Or easier to transport? Will they use it to develop forum and wiki software? Will they throw all the donations into a litigation pit? Will they use it to microfund workshops all over the world? Are they planning to do more outreach? If so where and how?
I’m not looking for a detailed step by step project plan. But something directional would be great. What will “version 5” give to the world compared to “version 4”?
If they can’t answer that then Precious Plastic is indeed in trouble. But the trouble is not from any of those mentioned stresses, but from a lack of vision and direction.
This is an ambulancing project. The focus should be on forcing industry to pay for the pollution they create on an industrial scale. It's never going to be cleaned up by small actors. These projects probably make plastic production more acceptable which is not what we want. Look over there, see recycling a few tones of plastic works, now let's carry on producing boat loads of shit.
I'll raise an alternative: plastics are degraded by the heat and pressure of repeated processes like injection molding. Recycled plastic objects will be of lower quality and shed more microplastics. Instead of recycling them, incinerate them for electrical energy. Use a modern incinerator design that guarantees 100% mineralization to carbon dioxide and water.
I was super excited about Precious Plastic when I discovered them 8 years ago. But it didn't take long to realize that they didn't have a clue.
The machines are all FAR too small and fancy/expensive to really make much sense. I've seen some more practical offshoots from PP that design larger machines with recycled materials etc, and consequently they have sustainable businesses around the world.
So, most of all, as is clear from the post, they never really even tried - in over a decade - to make it a viable, self-sustaining enterprise, of any sort.
Also, what's conspicuously missing from the post is their Portugal-based Precious Plastic Camp boondoggle, which always struck me as a hipster commune more than anything.
They also suddenly deleted the original forums, which contained lots of fantastic info.
So, I don't have much faith that throwing more good money after bad would help at all. I'm grateful for the inspiration and excitement that they brought into the world, but it's time for them to be recycled.
And, yet, I expect they'll con someone into helping revive them for version 5, 6 and beyond. That's the way of the non-profit world.
Until there's a reasonably priced industrial scale process to efficiently reprocess plastics into indistinguishable-from-virgin plastic precursors, I think all plastic waste and similar garbage should be burned in well maintained waste-to-power plants and eliminating this source of semi-fossil-fuel energy should only be considered a priority when all other fossil fuel power sources have been effectively eliminated.
We're already burning things for power, might as well have that crude oil take a detour into consumer products for a while first, and because it's useful in several ways, make it last in line to eliminate (and at the same time offsetting some oil/coal/gas production)
Someone donated 100k to them recently and they apparently gave it all to their community and didn’t use it to save their own org, so now they’re broke and dying.
Even cash won’t save you if you don’t know how to budget and plan.
US Centric view:
I would love to open a workspace. Full stop.
However, due to the price of the shredder and the tools required to transform the plastic into new forms; One needs to have a dedicated space with a lot of power. Then you need to secure a source of plastic. You would think this part would be easy, I mean that is the whole premise of this org's existence, right? You would be wrong in that assumption. There is big money in "recycling" in the US. From the collection, sorting, and distribution of recycled materials... someone already has a contract to legally "do it."
I am bummed to see them in this position. There seems to be a few hotspots around the world where this would really work. They aren't near me, that is for sure.
After reading this and clicking around the site I'm still not entirely sure what these machines actually do. Apparently they grind up hard plastics and turn them into pellets? But similar machines already exist as a commercial/industrial product that can easily and cheaply (from $500) be bought from Alibaba etc [1], so their differentiation is that their machines are open-source? Which is useful how, exactly? Their Pro page estimates EUR 2000+ in parts alone per machine, plus you need to cobble the things together yourself.
Perhaps narrow your role and allow someone else to be responsible & accountable for driving the business side of things?
Take an honest assessment of how you can meaningfully contribute and concentrate on that, and pass the reins over to someone else who specializes in handling reins. Where are you best? Pushing forward on a long-held vision, planting a flag in the ground and rallying everyone to it, while ignoring petty concerns like a positive balance sheet? Great! Delegate that latter one to someone who specializes in it and then cooperate & thrive with them.
On the other hand, the plastic industry needs reform. Only about 1/3 of plastic produced is recycled in practice, and even then only once. Hardly the recyclable miracle that the plastic lobby has been messaging on since at least the 1990s. And what is the industry's response? Increased production YOY! Want truly recyclable materials, in practice? Glass. Steel, and some other metals. Fibers, like paper, to an extent.
That being said, I see a need for "base-load" plastic. Plastic is useful and we may forever need it, until at least something better comes along. Particular in key single-use applications like health services.
Related. Others?
Start a Business from Plastic Waste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860992 - April 2021 (98 comments)
Precious Plastic Version 4 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21986375 - Jan 2020 (12 comments)
Precious Plastic Version 3.0 aims to fix plastic pollution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15497732 - Oct 2017 (35 comments)
PS: it's not highly visible in the link but this post is 6 months old [1]. Wondering where they are now, given that they seemed to have less than that in runway.
[1] https://community.preciousplastic.com/questions/questions-on...
Wow. The only people who could have decided to write and publish this article are the same people who did all of the other insane things in that article.
It reads as though they're begging people not to bail them out.
Like... in all of that, there isn't a single detail about how they aren't going to kneecap themselves again. (And, considering their track record, that seems inevitable, if not imminent.)
This should be taken down, and whoever has been doing these things should write up a plan for what they might do to prevent the truly obscene mismanagement laid out in the article from continuing. Perhaps ask for advice? Or, more likely, stop ignoring advice that many people must surely have been giving them.
Without that, they are seemingly just going to continue wasting the time, and money, of anyone who might get involved with their project.
(Also, the random pot shot at open source in general was unnecessary, irrelevant, and bitter. If they wanted people who use their software to give something back, then they should have licensed it accordingly.)
Several industrial scale recycling facilities in the Netherlands have closed or gone bankrupt partly due to how cheap new plastics are. They simply can’t compete and were hoping for legislation that enforces producers to deal with the waist or tax the use of new plastics. Sadly it never happened. Probably a strong lobby.
"Lawsuit
However after a period of time an accident happened with someone using the machine, which was very unfortunate. And in the US, especially NY this means you need to get lawyers. What happened, who is responsible? Is it the company that hired us all, Precious Plastic (back then operating under One Army Entity) for organising it, was it a result of bad operational instructions, misuse of the machine or a fault in the machine from the community member?
Hi there, we're working almost 10 years on the subject, also dealing with PreciousPlastic designs, users and problems on a daily basis. From what we can tell, its an extremely violent and fraudulent organization. None of the designs actually worked, nor any of the bold statements can be backed up with evidence. See here the full report : https://forum.osr-plastic.org/t/preciousplastic-review/11066
Its a scam after all, we know also well from others.
Good. We don't need amateurs producing low-durability microplastic-shedding mixed-resin trinkets.
Plastic recycling of any type is a complete fraud on the public, inefficient, and highly destructive to the environment in several ways. A comment I wrote a few days ago on another plastic recycling discussion:
The real issue with plastic recycling is twofold: it is a dead end and recycled plastics shed microplastics like crazy. Other materials, such as metals, can effectively be infinitely recycled, but plastic cannot; recycled plastic is worse than virgin plastic in every way. It also destroys the environment around us, because recycled plastics are effectively really shitty plastics that shed everywhere.
In short, plastic recycling is a fraud perpetuated by greenwashing initiatives. The only proper thing to do with old plastic is to incinerate it at high temperatures that achieve complete combustion. This is rare though; most plastic is burned at low enough temperatures that it causes pollution.
Great stuff, plastic, huh?
> Our problem was Chrome-6, a chemical the municipality found in the paint from the building that was applied 40 years ago. Which meant we had to leave the workspace fast, and the building was large, we had a lot of machines and items to sell, in a short amount of time, during lockdowns. This meant we had to sell many things below value since that period most people were looking to buy bread machines, not robot arms.
That's an asshole thing to do. Nothing is more petty than municipal politics, especially if amplified by a pandemic.
"The sky is going to fall if something isn't done about the 40-year-old Chrome-6! Everyone must GTF out of that building, right NOW!"
the donation form should be a lot more straightforward for single donations.. it requires too many fields and I can’t do a “fast checkout” like on online stores.. basically a big button sending me to a payment platform so I can just pay and move on.
I’m going to be straight with you: if you’re fundraising you need to write for the people who aren’t already part of your audience.
If that’s not what you’re doing then it doesn’t matter. But I read your blurb and then met the video at the fold and instinctively hit back.
Why build your own community software? Sounds like a waste of resources, there are many off the shelf and open source alternatives.
Give us money or we'll take the ball and go home... Why not donate PP (forums, discussions, designs, etc) to the community?
i went to read the page
then i went to read the comments here, current count 65
i don't get a sense that the people interested in this topic agree on anything, except "it's of some, but not too much, importance"
i do, however, get a sense that the people interested in this are in a distinct minority. i am always happy when a distinct minority gets their day in the sun and I get to learn about them.
It took way too fucking long to figure out what they’re doing. Maybe they should have paid for pr or marketing or something.
It would be nice to know how much money they got during all this time they've been active.
i find it nigh insane that companies doing good have to deal with the us-american legal system which is only good at extracting money instead of actual justice. what a shame.
this project is noble idea and good intention all around that I hope they have full success
but this is rough part that everyone need to eat and sometimes being a business is not bad idea at all
These recycling efforts can be quite bad in the long run because they recycle plastic into materials that cannot themselves be recycled. Not sure if that's the case here, but it's something to watch out for.
I know that some parts of the world do decimal point and thousand separator the other way around, but I've never seen a single symbol being used for both. Quite confusing.
From my own personal experience, it sounds like mismanagement
If you have six months of funds, left to operate, then count your blessings and be grateful and be creative bro
come on now why are you complaining?
Amateur hour.
Why is Putin in the promotion video?
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Six months before we run out of money oh my gosh, what a blessing, bro count your blessings and be grateful
I didn't see an FAQ and can only guess and piece it together, here goes:
Precious Plastics designs, sells and operates plastic processing and recycling equipment, including crucibles, presses, extrusion presses, sheet presses, injection molding machines, shredders, graders. You can buy the equipment or download the drawings for free, it's open source.
Precious Plastics operates a partner network of plastic recyclers and processors. Especially in developing countries where industrial scale recycling infrastructure doesn't already exist, this allows plastic recycling to happen in situations where it would otherwise go in a landfill.
Precious Plastics has a small, human centric ideal embedded in its culture and messaging. It's based around the idea of a small machine in a garage operated as a hobby with others in the local community, not a vertically integrated industrial behemoth.
Does that cover it well?
> We received a €100K donation. Which was amazing, but we decided to give it all to the community so they can continue developing their projects. Not to sustain the organisation itself.
It seems a lot of the problems they described are self-inflicted and go a step beyond simple mistakes or errors in judgment.
To be honest, I think the request for extra support would be more sincere if the leadership involved in those situations also stepped down and, instead of promising a 'version 5', looked at solving the problems in the org itself.
The due diligence just doesn't check out and there is zero indication that the organisation has learned from these problems and not merely acknowledged them. How would you know it's not a scam?