A 15-year-old boy from Mumbai in India has found a simple way to recycle plastic bottles, carrier bags and packaging鈥攗sing a converted bicycle pump. The teenager鈥檚 idea has been short-listed for the St Andrews Prize, an environmental innovation award, which will be presented at the University of St Andrews next month.
鈥淚 saw so much plastic rubbish on the beach here after a festival that I wanted to do something about it,鈥� Yash Joshi told 快猫短视频 in a telephone interview from Mumbai (formerly Bombay) this week. 鈥淭he problem is that it is not economic to collect and transport all this bulky waste. I decided that melting the plastic locally to make pellets that can be sold for recycling is the solution.鈥�
But to do that, he needed a simple way to force diced plastic detritus through a hot, high-pressure container, to melt and extrude it. Enter the bike pump. 鈥淚t occurred to me that I could adapt the barrel and piston of a bike pump to provide the pressure. And I added a small electric heater at the bottom of the barrel to provide the heat.鈥�
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His idea worked. He made a hole in the barrel to insert plastic debris, fitted the heater and pushed the pump. The result was an extrusion of molten plastic that could be easily snipped into plastic pellets. 鈥淚鈥檝e made more sophisticated prototypes since,鈥� says Yash. 鈥淭he latest is the size of a dustbin, and contains no bicycle pump parts. But the principle is the same.鈥�