We recently developed links with Patricia Eisenberg’s group at the Plastics Department of INTI. Initially we hoped to be able to use the hotpress at INTI to try out some of the local materials but today we met Patricia and she was keen to move beyond this and to work in a much more collaborative way with our project. She mentioned that there needs to be sustainability beyond our visit to Buenos Aires, something we have been losing sleep over, so it was like a dream come true to hear her words. We are very excited that the INTI group might be able to provide training and/or technical support to cooperatives and possibly research new waste materials which might be used and for which there is no current market. Patricia proposed a meeting in the near future to develop collaboration points between Waste-for-Life, the team at UBA and INTI. We’ve scheduled one for next Tuesday.
Another exciting part of today’s visit was finally having access to a hotpress and trying out the methods developed by my Queens student Ryan Marien, who has been volunteering on this project from afar. Using his method, Adrian, Mariana and I were able to re-create the cardboard fibre composite process with local materials – including the-standing-on-it-to-keep-it-flat-whilst-cooling part!