Recycled Plastic Shampoo packaging turns prosthesis for children

During his 40 years of experience, the hairdresser Bernie Craven, today retired, experienced the daily waste of the beauty salons of Australia. Not only hair, but also shampoo and conditioner packaging could have different purposes. Therefore, he created a project to manufacture prosthetics for children using plastic utensils discarded by the hairmen. Two children born without a left hand, 11-year-old Connor Wyvill and 12-year-old Haley Wright were the first to experience the prosthetics created by Waste Free Systems, a company founded by Craven. Galileo, the entrepreneur tells that the children have been using bionic hands for more than ten weeks and the result has been positive. The little ones love sports and they've won another prosthesis apart just to ride their bikes. The prosthesis test with boys is a first step for the appliances to start being marketed. "They both felt that they were a little long and wanted to have more control of their fingers, so we made changes," Craven says. Soon, the boy and the girl should receive a new version. The company intends to continue working with children as they grow – the idea is that provisional prostheses become definitive robotic hands. To manufacture the prototypes, the company partnered with the NGO E-Nable, which produces 3D prostheses for children around the world. An online kitty has also helped: just over 10000 Australian dollars (about R $28000) have been raised so far. To develop the first prostheses, the plastic collected in the beauty salons is destined to a warehouse, where it is selected. The following steps are to wash, dry and chop the polymers. Then, a dehumidifier dries the material, which is then placed in an extrusion machine. The appliance forces the plastic so that it comes out in the form of filament – this yarn, in turn, is used to print the hand in 3D. The first prototype created in this system took 9 hours to be printed and demanded 42 meters of compacted plastic. The project won a research scholarship at the University of Technology of Sydney. A university engineer and students from other Australian institutions, such as the University of Queensland and the University of Sunshine Coast, are helping in the technical part of the work. Currently, Waste Free Systems offers several salons in Australia crates for each company to separate its recyclable materials, preventing up to 90% of the material being disposed of incorrectly. The focus is to collect especially the plastic, but also recycled other materials, such as cardboard, glass, electronic tools, chemicals and hair – used to produce fertilizers used in local community gardens. "Our business plan is to reduce waste taken to landfills and thereby reverse the impact on the environment, educating entrepreneurs to reimagine and reorganize their waste in a better way," Craven said. Nice example, isn't it?