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Page added on August 18, 2013
The Plastic Bank: Monetizing Waste Plastic
The Plastic Bank is an organization and a movement aimed at removing plastic waste from the world’s oceans, beaches and waterways in a process that empowers people living in poverty to raise their standard of living and strengthen their communities. The concept is to establish “Plastic Banks” in impoverished areas with an existing abundance of plastic waste, allowing people to harvest the waste for credits used for micro-finance loans, repurposed necessities and 3D printing of everyday products.
A key focus of the program is education and empowerment, allowing people oppressed by poverty to envision and realize a better life for themselves, finding value in what has heretofore been a waste stream choking their communities and polluting the global environment.
“Social plastic is plastic waste that is harvested and repurposed for cause,” says Plastic Bank founder and CEO David Katz. “When operational, The Plastic Bank will exchange social plastic as a currency that can be used towards items that help lift individuals out of poverty and support local entrepreneurialism. As technology develops, The Plastic Bank will provide 3D printing services with the goal of converting social plastic into the raw material for 3D-printed products like tools, parts and household items.
Global social and environmental crises are linked, and so are the solutions,” adds Katz. “The crisis of waste plastics is an industrial problem that demands a transformative solution, like taking ocean-bound plastic waste and assigning it value. That is the promise of social plastic.”
Support the Plastic Bank
There are several ways you can support the Plastic Bank. First, by donating as little as $1 to their Indiegogo campaign you will help establish plastic repurposing centers around the world. You can also partner with the Plastic Bank to demand that corporations use only recycled plastics and help the transition to cleaning up the millions of tons of plastic waste entering our oceans every single year.
4 Comments on "The Plastic Bank: Monetizing Waste Plastic"
Dave Thompson on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 11:43 pm
Plastic is the perfect corporate example of externalizing costs. This looks like another way of externalizing the costs to clean up the mess through the worlds poor.
BillT on Mon, 19th Aug 2013 12:41 am
Already happening in Manila. Plastic of all kinds are collected and recycled for money. Lucky for the poor, plastic is still plentiful, although Makati has banned plastic bags for carrying goods purchased and the foam containers used for take-out. Now you have to use tough, reusable bags and you have to pay for them, or you get cheap paper bags that can tear easily. If you get takeout, the containers are also paper that does not last much longer then the time to get home. Not a problem really.
GregT on Mon, 19th Aug 2013 3:39 am
When someone figures out a way to 3D print alternate energy infrastructure from plastic waste, we might finally be on to a renewable energy source.
DC on Mon, 19th Aug 2013 3:43 am
As usual, both the producers AND end users (everyone really), avoids paying the true cost of plastics. Instead, groups like this ask for ‘donations’ to pay for disposal or whatever these guys have in mind. ‘Disposal’ and ‘cleanup’ of course, being meaningless concepts when applied to plastics, which will literally last forever in the environment. Why groups like this should be soliciting funds for futile efforts like this is beyond me. Gov’ts and society should be forcing oil companies and chemical corporations to fund ALL re-mediation efforts-not faux NGO like this. That fact nothing like this is happening on any scale, only proves how corrupt and decadent our civilization is.
We don’t need plastic ‘banks’ -we got those already in spades, we need blanket plastic bans.