Building a community-scale plastic recycling station to make flower pots from bottle caps

Abstract

Plastic waste is increasing worldwide, contributing significantly to pollution and global warming. Our department uses at least 50 plastic water bottles daily; these bottles can be reused to manufacture other products. Recycling plastic waste produces various products, including garden sets for kids, bricks, roof tiles, key holders, and flowerpots. Through this project, we contribute to the fight against pollution caused by plastic waste by developing an easy-to-use plastic processing system. We create these valuable products using plastic collected from landfills. We present an open-source system that can be easily built by a technical team to create an ecosystem. We use the project as a mobile educational model to demonstrate the recycling mechanism and to foster a community recycling culture. The following procedures are included in this study. High-density polyethylene bottle caps are washed and dried before shredding in a shredder to produce flakes. Plastic flakes are fed into an extruder, which heats and transforms them into a homogeneous mass. This molten plastic is molded into the shape of a flowerpot using a die. Pots are great products to obtain from discarded plastic caps due to their strength. Following the fabrication of the entire system, numerous tests are performed to improve the design and obtain the desired specifications, resulting in appealing end products. In our facilities, flowerpots are made from consumer bottle caps and used to grow aloe.