Unlocking the potential of waste plastic!

Plastic. It’s an international problem. It’s an environmental scourge. Yet, it’s a material with extraordinary properties. Our relationship with plastic is complex but it’s something we desperately need to set some new boundaries with if we’re going to tackle our environmental challenges.

At Future Makers, we're establishing a dynamic hub where creative entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and makers converge. It's a space where we foster partnerships and innovations that contribute to our sustainable future.

At the heart of this space, we're crafting the Waste Plastic Studio, a pioneering initiative to redefine our interaction with recycled plastic. This studio will explore and pioneer novel approaches to harness recycled plastic as a material for tomorrow's innovations

What’s it all about? 

We want creatives across the UK to develop healthy entrepreneurship. Through our experience of creating and running artist-led spaces over the last 19 years, we’ve witnessed first-hand the barriers creators face when trying to develop sustainable incomes, be environmentally-friendly, and access affordable materials – so with the Future Makers site, we’re aiming to fill that infrastructure gap.

So how does plastic fit into this vision? 

The stats are undoubtedly shocking. The General Assembly of the United Nations states that 1,000,000 plastic bottles are bought every minute across the world, and that 83% of tap water was found to contain plastic particles. In response, in November 2022 the UK government began talks to shape a legally-binding global treaty that aims to end plastic pollution by 2040 – potentially setting the wheels in motion to finally reduce international plastic consumption.

Image left: Sorting plastic bottle lids. Image right: Weighing HDPE plastic bottle lids.

But what about the immediate future? What if we could turn the waste plastic around us now into something desirable and useful? 

For makers and creators, recycled plastic could be an ideal affordable material. By combining the creativity of art and design with the environmental practicality of reusing plastic, we have the power to create a new circular economy that leads to desirable artworks, objects and products that have purposeful long-term uses.

But why do we want to use plastic at all if it’s so bad?
We’d love nothing more than a complete halt on production and usage of plastic – especially the single-use variety – and for sustainable alternatives to take its place. But that’s not realistic. Furthermore, the vast amount of plastic we’ve already made isn’t going anywhere for a long time. So we need a different strategy.

Inspired by the principles of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation’s circular economy for plastics, our project and studio aims to divert plastic from landfill and the environment, and give it a new usage. The more we can innovate with and circulate this material, the less that needs to be created.

How do we get recycled plastic?

We have the idea, we have the ambition. Next, we need to review the state of recycled plastic within the current landscape.

There are multiple different types of plastic in common rotation, and each has its own quirks as a material. When we throw a plastic bottle in our recycling bin, we don’t always think about whether it’s made of HDPE or PET, or even if it's truly clean or not. But this action can have a huge impact as to whether it can even be recycled in the first place.

For plastic to be recycled, it needs to be sorted, separated from other materials, cleaned of any contaminants and shredded, and from there it can then be reformed using a variety of different techniques. In the UK, there many waste plastic recyclers, each with their own approach and scale to deal with the above complexities of waste plastic. This is typically a large scale, expensive technical operation, which makes sourcing and financing the renewed material a real challenge for smaller businesses who want to use it.  

Rather than having to buy in bulk or wait weeks for delivery, we’ve found that independent creatives could benefit from quick, flexible access to recycled plastic materials, and importantly, the tools and education to make things with it. Presently, there is very little infrastructure in the UK to provide the waste plastic toolkit needed for experimentation, small-scale prototyping and product runs within the creative industries.

Image: Shredded mixed colour HDPE plastic - ‘Jazz Regrind’.

Breaking barriers

Change is happening across the globe and we’re seeing an increasing number of people rising to the challenge of repurposing plastic. Creators like Brothers Make are already using plastic waste, and the brilliant Precious Plastic project is sharing community knowledge and resources. From this, we’ve spotted a very clear Midlands-sized gap…

But rather than a barrier, we see opportunities. We’re developing a community of people in and around Nottingham who want to share in the processes of repurposing waste plastic for creative and practical purposes.

With a community-based approach, the studio aims to provide skills development, equipment and space to prototype and test with plastics recycled in-house. We also want to take this message to the wider public, to re-educate people about the journey and the importance of recycled plastic. 

Plastic fantastic 

To achieve our vision, Future Makers Waste Plastic Studio can only exist if we work collaboratively and across multiple sectors, effectively inserting ourselves into the supply chain. 

We’re creating strong business relationships for access to the equipment we need, and we’re already forging positive connections with local names in the UK construction industry – like Igloo Regeneration and Blueprint – to innovate solutions for waste plastic on building sites. 

With our vision starting to come to life, local designers and makers are already excited to use our space. This talent pool includes some key players in the creative community around Nottingham.

Where do we go from here? 

Broadway’s Near Now studio has been a crucial partner in supporting the research and development behind this innovative venture. They will continue to support our collaboration by establishing a central city plastic donation collection hub, encouraging community participation in repurposing plastic waste.

We've secured significant funding from Arts Council England and Innovate UK. This financial support empowers us to acquire state-of-the-art Thermoforming and Plastic Fabrication equipment. Our brand new cutting-edge machinery includes injection moulders, extruders, plastic shredders, in addition to valuable knowledge resources. These assets will play a pivotal role in our upcoming pilot program, tailored for entrepreneurial artists, designers, and makers to learn the art of processing waste plastic and transform it into valuable products.

Following this exciting phase, Future Makers will invite the community to join us on a transformative journey with our upcoming Waste Plastic Harvest campaign. We aim to actively engage local residents, businesses, and schools in the collection and recycling of plastic waste. Our ambitious goal is to harvest one tonne of plastic waste from our community, paving the way for a captivating public art installation and contributing to the reduction of plastic pollution. Stay tuned for more details on this initiative, and be sure to join our mailing list to stay up-to-date with all our latest developments!