another look at waste: belgian startup to print 3d recycled sunglasses
by:Tuowei2019-08-26
BRUSSELS (Reuters)-A Belgium-based start- Up is making the world more sunny by printing the first 3D sunglasses with recycled plastic. The Antwerp-Company w headquartersr. yuma - Pronounced \"we are Yuma\", named after one of the most sunny places on Earthbegan a month- The online crowd is very long On Wednesday, a procurement campaign was held at Kickstarter. After two years of prototyping and testing of different materials, the company has promised to transform old car dashboards, water bottles, refrigerators and other plastic waste into shades of different colors. \"This is the cool icon, really, when you wear [them] Literally, you\'re looking at the world through a different set of lenses, and that\'s exactly what I want to convey, \"founder Sebastian de Newburgh said of the company, named after Yuma, Arizona. \"I want to inspire another view of waste. Plastic waste comes from the Flanders area of the Netherlands and Belgium. The waste is fed into a 3D printer, melted into thin strands of plastic wire and layered together to build the frame. It is then assembled by hand and fitted with Mazzuchelli lenses made in Italy. Marketing plans include setting up booths at music festivals to turn plastic cups into sunglasses on site. The company also produces a limited number of soda ash white sunglasses made of 90% recycled PET plastic. It also invited. When the customer runs out of glasses, they turn it into a new pair of glasses. “The idea . . . (is) It\'s also to make sure that these materials end up coming back to us in a closed loop system, \"de Neubourg said. With five unique designs and three color lenses to choose from, De Neubourg is working to make sustainable recycling stylish and useful. Sunglasses will be shipped to customers in January 2018. \"I think sustainability should be mainstream,\" said de Neubourg, a former mechanical engineer at sustainability consulting. \"We won\'t solve the plastic waste problem by just putting this plastic in our sunglasses, but this is the first step. . . . I want to impress many people with this information.