Melting Waste Plastic to Make a New Sign 🌎

With Earth Day coming up, we thought we'd share one of our more planet-related builds. We wanted to try our hand at signmaking, so we came up with the idea of a two-colour sign, where we would engrave into the first layer to reveal the second. Once we had our sheets fully melted and bonded together, we then used our Stepcraft D840 to CNC our planet earth sign design out.

What do you think of the finished product? Using recycled plastic for this works incredibly well, and it uses up a lot of waste material in one go. There’s definitely potential here for more projects using this same technique. If you have any ideas you’d like us to try, drop a suggestion below 🤙🏽

#earthday #recycledplasticwaste #signmaking #sustainablesolutions

[MermaidMakes]

Next use the microplastic in my blood to create a miniature version of myself.

[crnkmnky]

🌍 *Keep the Earth Clean, It's Not Uranus!* 😎

[commododragon]

Uranus is the butt of all jokes. Let’s keep it clean, too!

[andrebartels]

The colour scheme totally fits the sign. Perfect 👌

[LaurelCanyonMojo]

Anyone else see that block as floor tiles ?

[juliabouzan]

Ive made some plastic blocks in a similar way, what i learned is its a lot of work to recycle plastic and you cant avoid making mocroplastics. We really need to reduce our use of plastic. Its still great people are working on making recycling more efficient though. 😊

[rodmorgan]

At first I was thinking wow, this is a lot of work for a sign. But in the end I could see why all that work was done. Great job

[jeanladoire]

Here's a way of recycling any plastic very efficiently : you use it as fuel with a high input of air. With enough oxygen, it doesn't smoke and combusts cleanly. So many things can be powered by scrap plastic, and it's much faster and efficient than re-processing them for hours to make very small items.

[suburno]

You guys should invest in commercial quesadilla presses! The ones at my work are about 3-4 times bigger than the standard home hot presses and usually come with a heat control dial and damn those things get hot!

[PJSproductions]

Part of reducing waste is reducing wasted time, and I feel like there's almost certainly a much more efficient method to remelt plastic and form it into boards, even at this scale.

[lrdhawkwind]

I love the fact that you show that you actually do you recycle the waste plastic that you make from making these things

[joshuahauenstein]

That's an awesome transformation I didn't expect

[ihaveseensuchthings]

The Gumby voice as the green was being stretched—unexpected throwback! Love this. 🌎

[hunterdillon]

All I see is the production of more micro plastics during that engraving process. Is there a vacuum or suction nearby to collect the waste, or maybe it's in an enclosed area?
I mean, we're all doomed to the plastic Apocalypse, but I was curious either way.

[isilwen]

Nicely done!
I would love to have one of these signs!

[DeviemTwen]

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” can be applied here.

[rebeccaredletter]

Beautiful!❤️🤗 I hope you protect yourselves from the fumes of heated plastic and the airborne particles of cut/shaved/sanded plastic. 🙏🏻

[JoSeph-cusr]

So much energy wasted for a useless sign. This is called greenwashing

[jimmyneutron]

WE BREATHING IN MICROPLASTICS WITH THIS ONE!!!! 🗣️💀😭💀🗣️👍

[bigandy]

Eco-friendly signage that took about 15Kw each to make.