Making recycling “fun and sexy” is what Taiwanese entrepreneur Arthur Huang hopes to achieve through his mini Trashpresso – a mobile recycling plant that converts plastic waste into consumer products such as coasters and candleholders.
It is the first innovation of its kind to be showcased in Singapore. The Trashpresso compacts the recycling process into three steps – reducing the size of the plastic waste, purification and reshaping.
It can transform 135g of pellets or recycled flakes into a set of three colourful hexagon-shaped coasters in less than 10 minutes.
Recycling right has taken on new urgency as the amount of waste disposed of in Singapore has, in the past 40 years, jumped seven times to 7.7 million tonnes last year (2018) and the contamination rate of the blue recycling bins is at a high 40%.
If Singaporeans continue to waste resources at the current rate, the country’s only landfill at Semakau will run out of space by 2035.
Founded in 2005, Mr Huang’s company, Miniwiz, moved its headquarters to Singapore last November (2018). It has an R&D centre in Taiwan, a manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, as well as an office each in Beijing and Milan, Italy.
A smart trash collecting system called Robin will be launched in October 2019 in Shanghai. The Robin allows users to track and earn points if they sort the waste correctly.
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Source: The Straits Times, 16 June 2019