I've tried recycling plastic bags before, following this method: https://www.instructables.com/id/HomemadePlastic/
It's ... non-ideal. The bags never properly liquefy, they just turn gooey. So you can't, say, pour the plastic into a mold; you have to pack it in, and it doesn't necessarily reproduce details well, because the bags don't want to squeeze into corners. It takes multiple bags to make one object, since they shrink like crazy, and the different bags never really merge with each other, so the final product may delaminate (peel apart). Since you need the oil to keep the bags from sticking to your pan and burning, the molded parts come out greasy, and you're left with some contaminated cooking oil to dispose of. I never made anything very successful with it ... but maybe some people have? I actually started trying this back in college. I had to use the common kitchen area in my dorm, and I did it really late, so that nobody could see the crazy person melting plastic on the stove. One time I made the oil smoke and set off the fire alarm. The building staff had a "better safe than sorry" approach to alarms, so they called out a fire truck around 1 AM. I vaguely told them "I had some hot oil on the stove, nothing to worry about" and everyone went back to bed. You can recycle some types of plastic bottles etc. into 3D printer filament, which seems more feasible, but you need shredder and extruder machines. Looks like there are some DIY designs for these. Long story short, I'd love to run a poor man's recycling plant in my house, but I haven't gotten very far. Don't neglect metal, either. There's a fair bit of aluminum trash around, and you can melt and mold that at home if you're determined enough. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T740f79e6fc3a89a3-Mcfc6a289b8e046b3f94900e5 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
