Waste doesn’t need to be wasted
Precious Plastics Melbourne is a family-owned social enterprise working towards a solution to plastic pollution, empowering and assisting businesses, community groups, and schools to move from our resource-draining ‘take, make, waste’ linear system, to a progressive circular economy. Precious Plastics Melbourne creates disruptive designs to positively impact the planet, striving for better outcomes for traditionally non-recyclable products, and providing accessible, local manufacturing solutions Australia-wide.
Precious Plastic Melbourne (PPM) was founded in late 2019 with a vision to create a circular, waste-free future for plastic waste. Their core mission focuses on making recycling highly accessible at a community level. They aim to recycle traditionally hard-to-recycle plastics, utilise 100% recycled materials to ensure recyclability at the end of the product life, help organisations reduce their reliance on virgin materials by producing functional recycled products, provide responsible, local manufacturing solutions, and empower the community to recycle plastic themselves by setting up micro-recycling workspaces.
PPM started their recycling journey by building a small injection mould machine and shredder based on open-source Precious Plastic machinery plans, with the intention of producing a small range of products in-house. Within the first six months of announcing their initiative, they collected over 300,000 plastic bottle caps from the local community. They have since designed and produced their own range of machinery that complies with Australia's safety standards and is easy and fun to use.
As a one-stop-shop for closed loop systems and design in Australia, PPM continues to evolve, adding new capabilities and developing innovative ways to repurpose waste. Their goal is to nurture a grassroots recycling movement across Australia, empowering changemakers and green entrepreneurs to create new opportunities for innovation and industrial symbiosis.
PPM creates bespoke products with intention, care, and love, sparking conversations around the importance of circularity. There is an increasing demand for 100% recycled products, and PPM is passionate about helping clients create circular business models using their own waste stream or locally sourced post-consumer waste.
They believe in rethinking the relationship with plastic, viewing it not as waste but as a valuable resource that can be recovered and returned to the material cycle. By providing recycling equipment, pre-shredded plastic, tools, and accessories, PPM supports organisations and communities in their recycling journey and contributes to the growth of the micro-recycling community in Australia.
Overall, PPM is excited about waste and wants to inspire others to see its potential as well. They emphasise the importance of collaboration and working together to create a circular economy for plastic, where products' lifecycle is considered from the concept stage. Through their work, they hope to redefine the way plastic waste is perceived and contribute to building a waste-free future.
Have a look at all of their amazing work here:
