The Precious Plastic initiative has grown from being a graduation project initiated by Dave Hakkens (Design Academy Eindhoven, NL) to a project that is recently acknowledged across the globe. Hakkens and his team designed several low-cost machines for plastic recycling – or let's better say upcycling – using basic tools and materials. Sharing technical drawings and blueprints online, this information brings recycling plastic closer to communities, who now have the power to create the machines by themselves and turn old plastic products into new, creative objects or even raw material that can be used in production of other plastic products. A group of NTSI researchers support the project by giving access to interested community members to the universities infrastructure, and organising educational workshops e.g. for schools. The team works on creating the plastic upcycling machines (shredder, extruder, injection, compression), and is also interested in using the recycled plastic as a ressource for the lab's prototypes, as well as the development of new products.

The project led to the initiation of a new research lab at NYUAD in Fall 2018: The Plastic Recycling Research Lab (www.plastic.international).