(Archive) Sparkling Plastic

The Starting Point

The Dutch designer Dave Hakkens developed machines which can recycle plastic all over the world. His initiative was the inspiration for Sparkling Plastic to take the next step. With his foundation, the machines and know-how that he gathered in his network Precious Plastic, Sparkling Plastic wanted to continue product research of the new material waste plastic. This resulted in Sparkling Plastic, a breeding ground in ’s-Hertogenbosch where students and creatives can experiment with waste plastic to create new sustainable products outside the (petrochemical) industry .
One of the main objectives of the foundation is to allow students and designers to experiment with used plastic in order to arrive at new applications. Give their imagination space and then immediately give them the opportunity to get started with the material themselves. Strangely enough, there is no possibility for this in the existing creative courses, while students do indeed need it. In addition, it is also important that students are involved during their education, because their education can guide them in their search.

Unfortunately, plastics are only recycled on a limited scale in industry. This is not at all in proportion to the still growing percentage of plastic that ends up in landfill or in incinerators. Until now, recycling has been too expensive, inefficient, and too unprofitable.
To give the processing of plastic waste more opportunity, we need to make products from it that have more value than the original product. That is still quite a task, but Sparkling Plastic is convinced that this added value can ideally created be by people in the creative field. They do not only see the end product as the creative solution, but also the thought process and the search for a different use of the material. Initiatives such as Precious Plastic and vanPlestik originate from students from the design and visual arts academies in the Netherlands. It is precisely these pioneers who dare to think outside the box, while the rest of society realizes the seriousness of the problem, but cannot (yet) solve it economically, technically or organisationally.

Developing new products and researching (new) technology is still in its infancy in the Netherlands. There is a lot of knowledge about how plastics behave when they are new, but the recycling process has such an impact that we should actually consider this plastic as a new material that still needs to be researched.

Unlike many other plastic workshops, Sparkling Plastic does not want to be a producer of all kinds of small gadgets, such as keyrings and Mother's Day gifts. That kind of stuff is admittedly attractive for a larger audience, but in turn they (quickly) end up in the trash. That is why we are looking for more sustainable applications, such as designer furniture and street furniture, but also spatial structures such as a pedestrian bridge.