The residents of Thessaloniki, Greece, can now recycle their plastic waste into 3D printed furniture for the city, using a new laboratory set up by Rotterdam studio The New Raw.
The Zero Waste Lab is the latest enterprise of The New Raw's plastic recycling initiative, Print Your City, established in collaboration with drinks brand Coca Cola.
Print Your City makes street furniture from plastic waste
It offers local residents a recycling facility for their plastic waste as well as the ability to choose what the waste is turned into, with a robotic 3D-printing arm that can transform the sorted plastic into street furniture.
Users can customise the furniture via a website, choosing between different colours and functionalities and also selecting which public space in the city they would like to see it in. The furniture is made primarily from PP and PE plastics
Options for each object include a planter, a bike rack, a feeding bowl for dogs and a bookcase, among other functions.
Once the design is chosen, the website tells the user how much recycled plastic would be needed to make the object. For instance, a large triangle-shaped bench with a library and an urban garden would require 90 kilograms of recycled plastic to build.
Users can customise the furniture via a website
"Plastic has a design failure. It is designed to last forever, but often we use it once and then throw it away," said The New Raw founders Panos Sakkas and Fonteini Setaki.
"With Print Your Ci...