Soft plastic recycling compactor
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For countries where soft plastics (shopping bags, bread bags, courier packets etc) are recycled.
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Model information
- Source
- Printables
- Category
- Kitchen
- License
- Creative Commons — Attribution
This is a tool for helping in countries where soft plastics are, or can be, recycled. It's surprisingly satisfying to use.
Here in NZ we have some limited soft plastic recycling, and an increasing pressure on landfills. Our rubbish bin used to get full within a week. Once we started to separate our soft plastics out, our bin was only 1/3 full by the end of the week, but we had large bags of soft plastics! It's really amazing how much of a normal households waste is this kind of material.
NOTE
I am very new to 3D printing (a few weeks in) and have almost no cad skills. I used Claude AI to help design this tool in SCAD.
How to use:
Line the body-tube with a spare bag...courier packets or bread bags work well.
Put the baffle part on top and twist to lock in place.
Shove soft plastics in to the hole. The baffle stops the material coming back out.
As it fills, use the rammer/pusher rod to shove a surprising amount of material into the body
Once you're at capacity, unscrew everything and tie the bag up.
Options:
There are two body options, depending on your printers capabilities. There's a single body piece, or the option to print an upper and lower piece that screw together. This two-part option takes considerably longer to print and a good chunk more material, but may be better for smaller print volumes, and may also be a bit stronger.
There is also a "grip" file which can be glued on to the lid to help open it. You may want to add pegs.
The pusher has a palm grip, a funnel shaped "rammer" end, and "Rod segments" in the middle, which all screw together. The amount of rod segments you use is up to you, but I used 2 on my model.
I've also included the SCAD file if it is of use.
Most pieces can be printed with minimal supports, other than the baffle piece. This design does use quite a lot of material and takes a good amount of time to print, but has been made to be robust.
The version in the pictures was printed with Sunlu High Speed Oreo Marble PLA.
I'm making this model creative commons as honestly I don't think there should be any barriers to tools that might help people achieve sustainability goals.