Young Nick Schick takes a large plastic sheet off a mold – credit, family photo submitted to CBS
In central California’s city of San Carlos, recycling plastics is a family affair.
Nick Schick and his parents, David and Andrea, work exclusively with products made from hard-to-recycle plastic polymers called thermoplastics.
Unlike water bottles and tote bags, thermoplastics lack conventional recycling methods. In order to stop them from reaching the landfills where they will breakdown into microplastics that poison our bodies and the environment, the Schicks run a chic nonprofit called Peninsula Precious Plastics that “rehomes” the material into new objects.
“Precious Plastics exists to sequester that plastic into reusable objects. So, we’re rehoming the plastic, so it doesn’t end up in places we don’t want,” the young Schick told CBS News SF.
Special community groups divert difficult-to-recycle plastics to Precious Plastics, whose shredder turns them into small granules that can be heat-pressed in molds for new objects like furniture, combs, keyrings, clipboards, and more. But the community engagement doesn’t end there.
“We get these incredible students, engineers, artists, and out-of-the-box thinkers who come up with the ideas to reduce plastic waste,” said Andrea.
– credit, Sofie Roux submitted to CBS
One such thinker was Sofie Roux, who had been working in Malawi to set up solar-powered classrooms packed into shipping containers. She contacted Precious Plastics hoping to get desks made out of the plastic.
Her nonprofit got some of the press machines from Precious Plastics, while dad David flew out to Malawi to help them install and work the open-source presses to form and cut their desks out of plastic gathered locally in Malawi.
It was a meeting of minds; a mix with Schicks. Check out Peninsula Precious Plastics and consider getting involved if you’re in the San Carlos area.
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