Hello! I’ve spent 1 month in Eindhoven meaning I’m long overdue for an update on my time here.
But wait, why are you in the Netherlands?
Dave Hakkens started Precious Plastic in 2013 with the goal of giving communities around the world the ability to work with plastic waste. While woodworking and metalworking has existed for centuries, most of us have no idea how to take raw plastic and turn it into something useful. After several iterations of open source machines, he’s helping turn plastic into a more precious resource rather than waste that typically ends up in landfills after a single use.
Check this video out to see it in action:
Through a grand vision and a €300,000 grant, Dave and Precious Plastic put out the call for volunteers to come to Eindhoven and start work on the next iteration. I applied, talked about robotics, and ended up tasked with researching robotic sorting!
It’s been a whirlwind month as the team has arrived and finished setting up the warehouse workspace and started rolling with projects. I’ve spent most of the month in the research phase, but we finally have robotic hardware on the way! More technical updates on this in the future.
The atmosphere here is inspiring as we’ve almost reached 40 (!) team members. I’ve made new friends from all over the world, eaten fresh vegan food every day, and learned about some incredible organizations working to reduce humanity’s impact on the planet, all while increasing my functional robotics knowledge. The first couple weeks we dealt with some crowded living spaces and long commutes (2 hours of biking each day!), but that thankfully turned around quickly. The Precious Plastic team was able to secure a batch of houses in a neighborhood through a local program called Antikraak (anti-squatting). The area is slated for demolition late next year meaning our members are perfect candidates to step in and help the neighborhood maintain a strong community atmosphere until then. It’s now only a ten minute cycling commute through the bicycle friendly streets of Eindhoven.
Last week was Dutch Design Week and I got to meet even more members of the Precious Plastic family as we welcomed visitors to our workspace and heard their stories. Eindhoven is already a design hub thanks to abundant warehouse space and the city’s acclaimed design academy, but the creative energy kicks into overdrive every year for Dutch Design Week. Exhibition spaces pop up all over, with a mix of students exhibiting the culmination of their studies, artists experimenting with interesting materials, and creative solutions to a variety of social challenges.
Unfortunately my travel camera broke a few weeks before leaving the states, but I’ve still been taking some cell phone shots and borrowing some photos from others. Slowly adding photos HERE.
A few things coming up next:
Receiving our industrial robotic arm and starting the serious testing
GLOW is Eindhoven’s annual lighting festival and will brighten up the city next week and bring in over half a million visitors
Working out a residence permit so I’m not limited to my 90 day short term volunteer visa
Oh yeah, and I also helped out filming the intro to our monthly news vid:
Best,
BHJ