Development of recreational equipment for processing recycled plastic

• Autor(a) principal: Borges, Beatriz Canha
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/36205
• topic: Plastic; Recycle machine; Recycling; Sustainability; Precious plastic; Project management

This project aims to increase literacy related to plastics recycling, associated technological processes and the creation of new products made with this raw material. Plastic materials present and contribute to a shallow environmental impact throughout their life cycle, except at the end of life. If discarded into the environment, they will be a source of contamination for thousands of years. It is therefore essential, on one hand, to develop recycling processes and incorporate this raw material in new products and, on the other hand, to create acceptance of these products made with recycled raw material in society. The circular economy is an alternative to the current linear, make, use, dispose of, economy model, to keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the most value from them while in use, and recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of their service life. The Precious Plastics project was started in 2013 by Dave Hakkens (Netherlands) and replicated in several locations worldwide. The University of Aveiro, in collaboration with Design Factory Aveiro and with the support of the project "INTEGRA@TEC -Transfer of integrated skills and generating business innovation in the Central Region". It developed a set of recycled plastics processing equipment in 2019, which integrated the Smart Plastic Lab, which has a pole in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Students have already used the equipment, professors and researchers for several scientific-technological dissemination and exploration actions, namely activities of the Summer Academy of the University of Aveiro, hackathons of the OceanWisee project and several masters' works. They will now also be in Precious Plastics Aveiro, a project to be developed by the University of Aveiro. This project was funded by the Portuguese Institute for Sports and Youth through the Youth Participatory Budget Portugal, which will bring together new equipment adapted for better transportability to be taken to presentations. The project Precious Plastics Aveiro aims to create a creative recycling unit, with offsite activities developed by the Living Science Centre Factory and activities in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Environment and Planning, as well as in the Design Factory Aveiro.