Why 60k tourists buy souvenirs made from trash?

hey everyone today we are in Amsterdam today we are actually in kurasaw and we are here to visit limpi one of the most exciting micro recycling projects in Central America and these guys recycled tons of plastic waste into over 60 000 souvenirs that theories take back home with them in their own countries [Music] hey guys welcome to Curacao hey we're here at San Pedro it's a very special Beach for us it's also where what inspired us to start with limpy because this is the one of the beaches where all the plastic is washed ashore that is in our oceans it's not the typical Beach you normally see on Curacao with white sand and a nice ocean but it's filled with plastic the plastic that is washed ashore here is not from Curacao but from the islands and from the ocean around us it's just a stream of plastic that reaches this part of the beach the quality of the plastic is really bad it's brittle you can feel the micro Plastics once you you clean it so the items we find is more consumer types of products toothbrushes lighters oil containers butter containers crates but also pieces of plastic that you don't really know what it's from find a lot of slippers pet bottles drinking bottles normally we come here to have a few cleanups and with that plastic we use to create the art pieces so you mean that you turn these into souvenirs for tourists yeah kind of let me show you okay so we've just been on this beach where all the plastic washes are sure from the ocean and this is really the moment when you realize that plastic waste is still a very pressing issue in 2023 so it's a tradition here to drink a coconut and eat a pistachi wow let's go let's do it welcome welcome to our workspace here right Mitchell I really want to know how we can give more value to this piece of plastic that I picked up on the beach all right let me show you here at limpy we have two categories of plastic we have the uh the ocean plastic that Materia picked up and we have the post-consumer Plastics the ocean plastic we use for the art pieces it's a bit more a bit more rough so the post-consumer plastic we use for the for the more finished products so we try to avoid that this ends up like this today we're gonna make our most popular products it's a sea turtle keychain and we're going to use post-consumer plastic so first we have to clean the plastic then it's wet so we have to dry it when it's dry it goes into the plastic Shredder and then it's ready to go into the injection machine once it's shredded it looks like this once we have the shredded plastic it goes into the injection machine this machine is based on Fresh plastic injection machine that we built our Shelf it basically works with the shredded plastic files in gas melted and inject it into a mold so the molds of the injection machine we make here in the a CNC machine having this machine in-house helps us to make products very easy and very fast I was checking out the product out of the mold we bring it to the office where we cut off the the product put a keychain on put on The Branding and then it's ready to sell all right Mitchell thank you very much so that's how you go from a plastic bottle that a lot of people would consider waste to a very valuable product like this one now I'm very curious to know what happened next Deborah would you like to show us some of the shops where you guys sell let's go so here we are at the mega pier where all the cruise ships in Curacao the tourism is very important on the island you have about 150 000 people living here and the tourist is about an average of a million people visiting the island per year and now this season there's cruise ships almost every day on Curacao sometimes one but sometimes even four so yeah the souvenirs are an important product for us also to sell and different kinds of shops and I'd like to go and show you one of them over here [Music] so we're here at the souvenir our home decoration store we're located right at the makeup here where all the cruise tourists pass to to see the rest of Curacao and this is where we sell most of our souvenirs like Flamingo cactuses sea turtles the shape of Curacao sea stars palm trees but we also sell Coaster sets luggage tags art pieces Beach Clips we've sold about 65 000 products this far and we recycled about 6 000 kilos of plastic with all these products as well and we like to think of it that the tourists are taking home our trash our plastic waste but for us of course it's not trash it's something very valuable okay here with our art pieces these products are very special because they are made from the plastic that is worcestershire on the island and with these products you really want to tell the story about a plastic recycling because you can recognize the pieces of plastic in the product so from the plastic we just grabbed this is what we can make out of that all right so we are having a nice tour with the guys to learn more about all the shops where they sell their products and the impact that they're having on the island yeah so here we are at the marketplace at hofi cascara and here are some of the projects we've made as well with limpy recycling we have signs that we make for businesses but also Furniture table tops where people can sit and eat the table tops are made from the sheets from plastic crates that we shredded and made in smaller pieces and then we can melt them and create sheets with the furniture pieces are also helping us to create an impact not only with the the amount of plastic needed to create a new product but also with the awareness that when people sit on these tables they know the plastic it's repurposed it's not a trash that has been thrown away but it's recycled on the island and made into new furniture yeah so here at hofikos karate I have a shop where they have all sustainable and eco-friendly products and it's a nice opportunity for us as well to sell our Souvenirs of the limpy line so another thing we do here on Curacao is work together with local hotels we're here at the Lion's dive hotel where we made mailboxes from recycled plastic for all the rooms so with the mailbox you have an open piece for them to put a piece of paper for the mill and you also have a sloth which you can turn around with the do not disturb sign and of course we also sell our souvenirs here we have our keychains and our magnets [Music] so we're here at the Marriott Resort one of our partners where we do a lot of projects with they have about 336 rooms where we all placed art piece made out of the washer plastic here on Curacao let me show you what we need so here we have the art piece is made out of the washer Shore Plastic here on Curacao we made three different shapes a sea turtle a starfish and a fish this project really had a big impact because every art piece is about one and a half kilograms of plastic waste so we needed to clean a lot of beaches we needed to collect a lot of plastic to be able to make all these art pieces so here we are at the local school on Curacao where we have one of our projects as well we have the football goals which we made from the plastic beams so this is one of the schools where we have two goals and there are about 40 schools on Curacao who will be getting these goals as well all right so our days here in kurosaur coming to an end all right and I really hope that you find the refresh in the approach that limp is having on the souvenir industry an industry that is generally very wasteful and sustainable and creating a lot of waste and how they reinvent once again the souvenirs as an item of craftsmanship and made locally so if you're ever in search for a great business idea in your country well there you have it okay that's it from Curacao ciao [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Precious Plastic

Views: 3,001

Keywords: Curaçao, marine pollution, ocean waste, recycling, plastic, souvenirs, tourism

Id: zf9gykoE9hc

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023