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Georgia Tech debuts plastic recycling TrashPresso
Georgia Tech researchers are working on molds to turn plastic bottles into architectural fittings for a campus pavilion.
ATLANTA - Georgia Tech is tackling campus waste head-on with a brand-new facility designed to reshape how students and staff view discarded materials.
What they're saying:
At the center of the university’s new Trash Lab is the Trashpresso, developed by developer Miniwiz, which works like an espresso machine but instead brews recycled goods.
"It's all around us as to why we need to think about sustainability and think about innovations that will improve our life and reduce our impact on the planet," said Michael Best, executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology.
Instead of traditional recycling methods that struggle with mixed materials, the Trashpresso can take virtually any kind of plastic, mash it together, and form it into a customized mold.
"Almost no system allows you to take next to any kind of plastic…mash it all together…and then form that into a mold that can become a phone charger or maybe pins or kind of almost Lego bricks that would then go on to construct a chair or a sofa or a piece of outdoor furniture," Best explained.
The circular nature of the technology means the plastic's lifespan doesn't end with a single product.
"Even if we run through 10,000 of these, if we decide we don't like one, or we just decide that we don't really need all that many, we can put these straight back into the system and run it all through again, either into the same mold or into a different one," said Trash Lab Director Tim Trent.
Researchers are already looking at larger applications for the technology.
"In our School of Architecture, we are working to develop molds that would take these reused plastic bottles and other plastic waste and turn it into some of the architectural fittings that would then help construct a pavilion that our colleagues are building on campus," Best said.
Looking ahead, Trent has even bigger aspirations to scale the technology beyond Atlanta.
"I also know there are lots of ways that this equipment could go, not just in the lab here and sort of go out into the world," Trent said. "I have an aspirational dream that we actually put this system itself into a shipping container, throw some solar panels on it, and have a mobile lab that can go right to the place that recycling needs to happen."
The Source: The information in this story was gathered from Georgia Tech officials, who detailed the launch of the new Trash Lab and explained its recycling technology.