In the spring of 2019, Free Plastic was born. Our earliest functional efforts were spent doing research and feasibility of production processes. Shortly thereafter in June, we held our first public workshop at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, FL. With over 1,200 museum visitors that day to celebrate World Ocean’s Day, Free Plastic took over their makerspace lab to discuss the current recycling crisis and demonstrate various ways to safely and easily recycle plastic and plastic pollution. September of 2019 saw our next public event, a lecture for the Key Biscayne Citizen Scientist Project’s monthly lecture series at the Key Biscayne Community Center. September also marked our formal incorporation as a non-profit corporation under the charitable umbrella of the Key Biscayne Community Foundation.

We focused the remainder of 2019 on research and development, mainly looking at building a mobile version of the Precious Plastic shredder, which was debuted in early 2020 along with our new mobile mold injector. We also designed and fabricated numerous molds, as well as developed new products & content to share with the Free Plastic community.

• Lazy Rivers – The Lazy River is our take on the lazy susan, where we have packed in 30-50 grams of unrecyclable plastics in to a cute lazy susan to accent your home.
• New Trophies – Working with The Children’s Trust, we created two new trophies for their Youth Advisory Committee. Pics coming soon!
• Wall Art – We created new Plastic Ocean pieces, and we even auctioned some off at the fantastic Aqua Party.
• “Shifting the Paradigm of Disposable Plastics” – We wrote a thing! You can jump over here or here to read our article on recycling and updating how we all view our trash.
• Plastic Tiles – With our mold injector working, we dove into making tiles that could be used for wall accents or floor coverings
• Coffee Tables – We built two (and salvaged one!) coffee tables, while injecting over a kilogram of unrecyclable plastic waste into epoxy river tables.
• Artist’s Canvas – We teamed up with an artist in Orlando to create a canvas for their upcoming piece. It is 16″ x 20″ polypropylene and epoxy canvas made from over 1,500 grams of plastic. Details on this coming soon!

And then in April 2020, we were invited by O, Miami to collaborate with them during their poetry festival. COVID-19 put a damper on our project, so instead of doing another public workshop (with a twist!), we did an online workshop to discuss and demonstrate local recycling, engage our participants with a poetry writing workshop, and to present our upcoming project, Plastic Poetry. We can’t wait to dive into Plastic Poetry, but until this pesky coronavirus goes away, it is not safe enough for us to move forward. Until then, we will have to keep this project in the “coming soon” category.

Oh yeah, and through all of this, we have safely and successfully recycled 8,215 grams of plastic. That is over 18 pounds of plastic, which is equivalent to over 16,000 drinking straws or nearly a thousand plastic water bottles.

We’ve come a long way in this past year, and looking back, all we can do is smile. We thank you all for your support, and we can’t wait to show you what we have lined up for the future!

Thank you.