With 5 kg of used PET bottles in their luggage, six eighth-graders from Kooperative Gesamtschule (KGS) Pattensen arrived at IKK to take plastic recycling into their own hands.
Under the guidance of Dijan Iliew, a research assistant at the institute, the material was first shredded. This involved separating bottles, lids and lid rings from each other. The pupils had already rinsed the material at school and roughly cleaned it of any remaining contents.
The material was then processed further: Once in a manual melting press directly into spinning tops and another time in an extruder into coiled filaments for 3D printing.
Conclusion: the circular economy is not entirely feasible without effort and, due to the raw materials contained in plastics, is an important aspect of resource conservation and therefore sustainability.
