Welcome to PLASTIFY!
We are Paul and Yew Jin, and we are Karang Gunis. Together with our team, Plastify recycles plastic waste here in Singapore and educate on plastic circularity through educational experiences.
Yew Jin heads the prototyping, production design, & manufacturing. He is a technical engineer formerly in themed & live entertainment.
Paul heads business development, experience facilitation, and marketing. Paul is an actor, model, and host, with experience in solar project management.
Our Journey
The idea began in 2021. With Singapore’s mono-bin recycling system and a 4% plastic recycling rate, there wasn’t a hopeful, tangible, and scalable solution to tackle the plastic problem locally.
We started collecting plastic waste from our households, and started experimenting: from melting bottlecaps in donated ovens (do not recommend), building our first injector, to making our first carabiner mould.
Today, we have 12 injectors, 2 sheetpresses, and various machines to deliver recycling solutions. We partner with brands, schools, and community groups, giving talks and giving hope to plastic recycling.
PRocess framework
PLASTIFY collects 100-200kg of HDPE2 and PP5/week from 3 waste steams:
1) Community donations (public bins)
2) Corporate partnerships
3) Environmental waste (Beach clean-ups)
The plastic waste are sorted into plastic types, washed, delabelled, dismantled, shredded, and finally melted using various machines into different profiles.
Each plastic type requires a seperate set of machines to avoid contamination.
the plastic types we accept
There are 7 main types of plastics, and generally only PET1, HDPE2, LDPE4, and PP5 are recyclable.
At Plastify we only recycle clean HDPE2 and PP5.
These two belong to the polyolefin family - lightweight, versatile, and most importantly, the safest plastics to melt and remould. That’s why they’re the perfect fit for our recycling process.
From recycling safety helmets to frisbees (HDPE2), and medical inhalers to contact lens blister packs (PP5) - this is what makes PLASTIFY collaborations interesting!
HOW PLASTIFY MACHINES WORK
1) PLASTIFY injectors (For products and workshops)
Injectors melt plastic shreds within a heat-insulated barrel. With pressure from a manual push of the lever, plastics are injected into a mould, conforming to its shape. Various moulds are brought to an event.
2) Sheet Press (For furniture)
Plastic shreds are placed within a frame, and slid into the sheet press. Using hydraulic power, the top and bottom plates are compressed against each other and heated, forming slabs. These slabs can be cut using a Computer Numerical Control into any shape.
