Purpose Plastics Creates Homeware & Fashion Items Using Plastic Waste
Purpose Plastics’ founder Abe Lim aims to make Malaysia a cleaner place by achieving smaller goals of recycling 1 tonne of plastic waste every month
Plastics have become so prevalent around us that there are hardly any places where you cannot find their presence. Since Malaysia is the world’s largest plastic waste importer since 2017, it’s a big issue for the country to reduce plastic that’s impacting the environment, as well as the health of living beings with its detrimental effects. Therefore, the country must take appropriate measures to manage plastic waste before the situation worsens.
Fortunately, local green company, Purpose Plastic is trying its level best to repurpose plastic waste after finding the issue that their country is facing. Using the waste plastic pieces and bits, the company creates sustainable homeware and fashion items. Abe Lim is the brain behind this green initiative that’s working to protect our environment from the dangerous effects of plastic.
Image: Options
When asked about her inspiration behind the conversion of plastic waste into something useful, she mentioned that it all started after she realized how much plastic she uses alone. And, imagine the amount of plastic around 30 million people in Malaysia use. Therefore, she tried to find a solution to the problem on YouTube.
Later, she thought of turning something useful out of the plastics into her own bins. After that, she began collecting plastic from friends, family, and even neighbors before approaching the recycling manufacturers and centers that have plastic to dispose of.Since then, Abe’s company Purpose Plastic started off intending to make Malaysia a better and cleaner place. The firm aims to recycle around 1 tonne of waste plastic every month. Using recycled plastic, she creates various useful homeware and fashion accessories.
Lim says that this process of turning plastic into something useful does not have big requirements. All she and her team need is a machine if the plastic is in a bigger volume. While the process is not time-consuming, they do need some time to separate the plastics into specific types, as certain manufacturers don’t stamp the plastics. They even separate the plastics by colors and then start the general cleaning process.
Image: Options
After separating and cleaning the plastic scraps, Abe and her team blended resin with the recycled HDPE/PET/PP plastic waste for molding it into a specific shape. According to the team, epoxy resin works wonderfully as a gap filler and a shape holder. It’s also quite strong and versatile. Hence, there’s no plastic melting in the process, as the melting of plastic exudes toxic fumes, making it much easier to recycle any sort of plastic with ease.
You can check out Purpose Plastics’ website to see all products they have converted into fashion accessories and homeware items. Some of the items include hair clips, coasters, candle holders, Chinese chess sets, and a figurine. In the future, they are aiming to make furniture and also combine plastic waste into various infrastructures, including bricks and roads.
Via: Options
