From Trash to Treasure: Recycle Cutlery into 3D Filament!

Single-use Plastic Cutlery is not only horrible to use but also produces a lot of waste. I tried recycling it to 3D printing filament and documented my journey. Let's find out more!

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*Chapters*
00:00 Introduction
01:59 Setup
03:21 Batch 1: 100% Shredded Material
06:42 Batch 2: 50/50 Mix
07:52 Sponsor
09:22 Batch 3: Different Material
11:02 Batch 4: The Perfect One
14:32 Summary

#3Dprinting #Recycling #PlasticWaste
DISCLAIMER: Part of this video was sponsored by Brilliant.
FTC Disclaimer: A percentage of sales is made through Affiliate links

[Dangineering]

It would be interesting to see you do some iterative strength tests by starting with virgin plastic and then extruding, testing and then grinding it to extrude it again and see the trends in the strength metrics as the number of melt cycles increases. This could potentially help determine by comparision how much virgin plastic needs to be added to recyled material to reach certain strength thresholds.

[UncleRedz]

King's collage London, just released a paper ("An enzyme used in laundry detergent can recycle single-use plastics within 24 hours") on a very fast method that breaks down PLA to monomers within 24 hours, without quality degradation of reproduced PLA. Its a long way from that to commercial recycling, but it shows the possibility of a much more practical way to recycle than the time consuming industrial composting.

[chungnun]

I think it would be interesting to put coloured, fine glass particles, while it would definitely shred a regular brass nozzle it would be interesting to see it print

[Matz]

Very interested in home/small-scale recycling, especially with open-source and affordable equipment. If it's not practical to do collected-recycling of our plastics, it seems we'll have to do it ourselves, where we know exactly what we have and can keep it uncontaminated. Unfortunately, both shredding and (to a somewhat lesser extent?) extrusion equipment is currently cost-prohibitive to most makers, but it's good to see capabilities rising and costs falling!

[TheLongHairedFellow]

I would be interested in seeing you try and recycle sprues from model kits like military model kits or gunpla. You will commonly find styrene and ABS in both and should make for a fairly decent printing material.

[LTBRAVO]

I imagine you could make some very one of a kind filaments with those pigments and as said by others imagine if it was slightly wanted, I mean that red kind of reminded me of tomatoes in the ends with its colors fading back and forth

[lambornD]

The biggest problem I'm seeing with this is that, if you need to wash the utensils to recycle them anyway, why not just use reusable utensils?

It's pretty cool that it can be done though.

[orsonzedd]

Ooh I wonder if you could source some actual litter into filament

[uran]

Hallo Stefan, wie wäre es mit Kunstoff von einem Recycling Center, die ganzen PET Einwegfalschen müssen ja irgendwo verarbeitet werden😉 Wäre bestimmt ein cooles Video. Vielleicht auch mit einem Interview der Betreiber, ist zwar nicht dein üblicher Content aber vielleicht willst du ja etwas neues ausprobieren. Gruß Sven

[alexdillehay]

I would love to see you turn more complicated old-prints into new filament such as polycarbonate, tpu, and petg. I love this "series" because it truly shows just how much 3D Printing can impact the world not only through building, but through recycling as well.

[VincentGroenewold]

Thanks for being one of the few channels that actually talk about recycling or the pla issues in general! Even though this still seems too difficult/expensive for most, it's vital to shine a light on it.

[thebmc]

What about plasic containers from take out food? It feels like a logical next step! As always, good job Stephan!

[MetalheadAndNerd]

If you use the used plastic cutlery you might even create some exciting new variants of scented filament.

[Kraigasaurous]

I work in injection molding hopefully I can help with some mixing percentages. For most of our materials we have anywhere from 4%-6% for color hopefully this will help with color consistency. As far as regrind (recycled plastics) go, we change % based on how much scrap we have. Recycled plastic has generally already gone through a heat cycle and the polymer chains do break down causing a less viscous melt. This could be why your diameter for your recycled filament wants to stay undersized but when virgin material is added the diameter increases. If you want to do a 15%-20% Virgin added to regrind, then maybe stepping up a nozzle size on the filament extruder and running a slightly hotter melt. This hopefully will help with filament diameter and a more homogeneous and consistent melt and color. As always do what you do best and experiment for the best results. I just hope this helps put you in the right direction.

[anthonypoole]

This isn't just a US problem. Asian countries have the most plastic waste in the world. This is a huge opportunity for reuse worldwide!

[williambrown]

I love that you've really taken this on! I think the biggest blocker for slightly wider adoption is the cost of the shredder still. It'd be cool if there was a cheaper option that performed well, or perhaps you could look into designing one?

[ronnybergmann]

This looks awesome for the use with single use plastics! Though, CPLA is quite uncommon for anything else, isn't it? Could you give Polypropylene (PP) a try, too? Many packaging materials are made from it and it has some really interesting properties.

[anthonysciutto]

Been really enjoying all the recycling videos! Keep them coming. I think it would be good to mention that most plastic cutlery is made from PP and PS and not PLA.

On a related note, PureCycle is a PP recycling company that finished their first large-scale plant in Ohio earlier this year.

[shooterb]

Not gonna lie my main issue with this is the shredder. It would be interesting to see a good way to shred the plastic for cheap

[jamisonsmith]

You did the plastic silverware. Now try the plastic food containers, trays, cups, etc. Love watching your channel, always interesting new things to see and learn!