We started Free Plastic when a few beach cleanup groups became connected with our for-profit design company. We supported them on social media, helped them with logos & media needs, and then got totally sucked in to their feeds.

Day after day, these groups pulled garbage from our oceans, waterways, and shorelines. And, day after day, we watched as all of these possible resources were collected, sorted, counted, and then placed into a garbage bag or dumpster.

Why couldn’t that carefully sorted and calculated waste be delivered to someone that could do something with it? Who would that be? Us? Yes.

When we started, we considered most of the plastic pollution to be “unrecyclable” because of two things: (1) contamination, and (2) our community doesn’t recycle most of our recyclables.

Anything that was too contaminated with organic material or with petroleum products, was shredded and boxed for epoxy pours. Everything else that was deemed usable, was cleaned and shredded and placed in marked containers. But, we didn’t know how to handle this clean, mulched plastic.

Thankfully the internet brought us to Precious Plastic. And since then, we have been studying and experimenting with how to melt and reshape all of the mulch we have.

Yesterday, Dave Hakkens released his video on working with plastic pollution and ocean plastics. We knew it could be done, because we have been successfully doing it, but to see a large scale production for community waste is amazing.

If you are wondering where Free Plastic’s roadmap is going to take us, it is right to these modular, mobile, community-based containers that can empower communities throughout south Florida to reclaim their environments, and possibly their own plastic wastes, while creating lasting consumer products, unique building materials, and even some tasty artwork.

Check out the Precious Plastic team in the Maldives below. And support Free Plastic on our journey by making a donation here.