On Thursday 13th July, the Santander Nomadic Circular Makerspace held yet another precious plastic workshop with more than 62 participants in the Cazoña Civic Center with the aim to collect materials, fabricate and raise awareness.
In particular, in the pilot city of Santander, an Analysis of the feasibility of a local plastic collection network is being carried out to give it a second life. In this process, citizens are involved to collect the plastics and bring them to the community centres and schools among other municipal establishments. The plastic is brought to the makerspace, where it is separated and classified for reuse as second raw material. Once the plastic waste has been cleaned and sorted, it can be used as a second-use raw material in the manufacture of new products. In the Santander Makerspace, after the plastic has been sorted, it is crushed in the automatic shredder and in the manual shredder for producing plastic flakes. The plastic flakes are then ready to be introduced into the injection moulding machine and the plastic is injected in a fluid state into the different aluminium moulds. After waiting a little while for the moulds to cool, they are demoulded and the product is obtained. The process of collecting plastic waste, cleaning it, sorting it, shredding it, injecting it into the artisanal recycling machines and finally obtaining new products represents a palpable and clear example of Circular Economy, which so far represents an abstract concept for most of the citizens of Santander, so these series of workshops represent an important means to raise awareness about the Circular Economy and bring manufacturing and the maker movement to the citizens.
