When SST attended the conclusion of the third SANO cohort in Norway, we decided to also pay a visit to Plasteriet, which is a small business operating in Trondheim. Circularity sits at the operational core of Plasteriet, and the company goes to great lengths in raising the value of plastic that would otherwise be treated as waste.
Finding sustainable solutions for post-consumer plastic waste is one of the key challenges for the circular economy, because it tends to be more contaminated than pre-consumer waste, which makes it more difficult to recycle, less desirable to recyclers and less valuable.
Plasteriet works with post-consumer plastic, shredding the items into small pieces (plastic sawdust), which is used as feedstock for their onsite injection moulding machine to create homewares, buttons, accessories, hand tools, and various other stunning products.
For one of their recent orders, a producer of shampoo commissioned Plasteriet to transform its post-consumer shampoo bottles into exquisite beads, which were handed out as gifts at the company’s summer function. In striving to deliver on the UN’s sustainability goals, part of the Plasteriet philosophy is that when sustainability is embraced, style does not need to be sacrificed.
While Plasteriet deals with material recycling on a small and local scale, their efforts demonstrate creative end-of-life solutions for keeping plastic waste out of the environment, and ultimately out of our oceans, where it doesn’t belong.
