This was, in a way, a very heartwarming talk. It showed that a small group of people can indeed start with small changes if they are dedicated to, as Precious Plastic Shangai showed, which can lead to very creative and fun solutions to the . The way the group started seemed humble enough for this to happen all over the world, which is always a nice attribute any solution to the plastic problem should have; since it’s a globlal problem, global solutions are the way to go.
An important addition to the talk were the different ideas in which you can start a similar initiative without the need of expensive and specific machinery, such as the gluing of different parts with the use of plastic bottles and a heat gun. This was in fact a particular solution that I found quite ingenious, really inexpensive and certainly very creative; and I am surprised I have not seen this concept applied more often to many aspects! In the same sense, the different solutions they had to immplement to their unexpected issues (such as using a bycicle to power their shredder) revealed how many times the approach to the waste management is a matter of keeping your mind open.
A confusing opinion I might have interiorized throughout the years might have even been challenged by this project: the idea that these kind of initiatives are nothing but a small and fun bandage into the enormous wound we have caused in the biosphere.Perhaps it was due to how painfully long and inefficient this process looks as an outsider compared to how mechanically easy it is to create plastic (in short, the lack of industrialization up until now). Or rather because I felt that many times these inititatives were only useful and fruitful as an art exibition, which requires creative thought at every step of the process and as such, quite slow compared to the rate at which our garbage pile is growing. I still don’t think this is the solution, but it is indeed a very important change in the way we think about it, a rather needed perspective on creating a more efficient lifecycle for our waste, not only in the arts, but also as construction material, which can indeed be industrialized to compete with the production of plastic.
true. This initiatives maybe are too small and there is a structural change to be made. As long as the companies don’t have incentives to do research, they won’t do it. Countries were doing it before for winning a war, so I guess governments were pushing them to do that. Now, who is pushing them to investigate about a better lifecycle of materials?