UL Sustainability Challenge – rePET3D

 

Earlier this year, we launched the UL Sustainability Challenge to encourage our students to develop research projects to tackle the Climate Crisis.

The competition was open to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, and offered up to €10,000 in funding to develop working pilot projects to show how their innovative ideas could be scaled up to make an impact on the biggest challenge of our time.

Having been overwhelmed with inventive entries, we have now announced the winners of the inaugural Sustainability Challenge, and are excited to showcase their ideas – and the research that they’ll be conducting over the coming months.

re-PET3D

Plastic pollution is rife worldwide, and Ireland is no exception. Up to 60% of our plastic waste is being exported, incinerated or dumped in landfill, and as little as 33% of plastic packaging is recycled in Ireland.

Yet this waste material could be given a useful second life. That’s the focus of Emma Jude Lyons (3rd year PhD, CONFIRM and School of Design), Callum Guttridge (3rd year MSc, CONFIRM and School of Design), Alice Shannon (4th year PhD, CONFIRM and School of Design) and Niall Mulcahy (2nd year MSc, CONFIRM and School of Design).

Their project aims to harness plastic waste to benefit local communities. The waste material will be used locally, rather than transporting or exporting it for recycling resulting in fewer transport emissions as well as reduced waste.

They’ll be collecting waste plastic bottles made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic, which will be treated locally before the material is then recycled into 3D-printed objects such as urban furniture, large-scale outdoor games for schools, and art pieces.

Professor Norelee Kennedy, Vice President of Research at University of Limerick said: “This multidisciplinary team from the Confirm SFI Research Centre brings materials science and product development together to tackle the challenge of plastics recycling. This project has the potential to be an exemplar community initiative which can bring the circular economy to life for our campus community.”

We spoke with the team about the re-PET3D project to understand what winning the Sustainability Challenge means to the team, and what they hope to achieve:

Q: Congratulations on being a winner of the Sustainability Challenge. What does it mean to you to have your project chosen and funded?

Thank you. We're delighted to be chosen for one of the awards. It's great to have the opportunity and experience to apply for funding, and get to work on this project while still undertaking our postgraduate research. We get to work on a project we are passionate about and use it as a pilot, and if it works out well the project is scalable in the future.

 

Q: Why did you choose this particular project?

We're all doing our postgraduate research around 3D printing in healthcare, and we're passionate about 3D printing in general. When the Sustainability funding call was announced, we brainstormed how to apply our niche skill set to support sustainability in an interesting way.

Q: What do you hope to achieve over the coming months?

We will primarily focus on processing waste plastic bottles to produce a 100% recycled 3D printing filament. Once we have the process working, we should be able to make almost anything using any regular 3D printer.

Q: Do you have any advice for other students who want to become more engaged in climate action or sustainability research?

We would say to just look at the tools and skills at your disposal and see how they can be applied.