Trashpresso by Miniwiz - World's first portable recycling plant that transforms industrial and household wastes to sustainable construction materials

Business case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Scalability

Extracting resources and processing them to produce materials for use bysociety

Materials and Fuels

Producing electrical equipment and machinery for industrial use

Capital Equipment

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Societal Services

Producing building materials and providing services to create residential and non-residential infrastructure and real estate


Construction and Infrastructure

While resources are in-use, maintain, repair and upgrade them to maximise their lifetime and give them a second life through take back strategies when applicable

Stretch the lifetime

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Consider opportunities to create greater value and align incentives that build on the interaction between products and services

Rethink the business model

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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The TRASHPRESSO is a solid waste recycling line. The assembled unit is made up of a 40-foot container housing the processing line and a 20-foot solar cell unit, separately. Both units are land, sea and air transportation ready.
The TRASHPRESSO compacts the recycling process into three simple steps: size reduction, purification, reshaping. Additionally, we safeguard for environmental discharge from the process line operations with air and water filtration.
This recycling process line at present transforms plastic trash into a robust low-cost housing product. There are currently two such Trashpresso in activity around the world 




 





The TRASHPRESSO can upcycle up to 50Kg of waste per hour! Waste is converted into architectural tiles that have both a utilitarian and raw material value.
These tiles are versatile and resistant, allowing for a wide variety of applications. They can be used decoratively as interior or exterior decoration finishes or serve as flooring and supplement insulation.
Waste compressed into tile format is less costly to transport, facilitating industrial scale up. For example while at a recycling plant, the tiles can be up-cycled through cycles such as yarning, injection, or extrusion.
The TRASHPRESSO can upcycle polymers into thermoplastic that have a melting point lower than its burning point. 









 













 





Illustration of the recycling line of the TRASHPRESSO 1: 







 





Illustration of the recycling line of the TRASHPRESSO 2, the line is subdivided into 2 independent 20-foot decks for more portability: 







 





 Electric actuators operate the solar panels inclination, maximizing their efficiency. They are situated on the roof of the TRASHPRESSO, as wings. A hydraulic pump rises up the pressure into hydraulic actuators to lift the roof for a perfect deployment of the solar panels, as wings. These systems are, as well, fed by the electricity stored into the batteries.
To mitigate the risk of relying solely on solar energy the TRASHPRESSO is also equipped with a backup diesel generator.
The Diesel generator has been partially used for Trashpresso 1’s Tibetan Mission due to the continuous snowing condition.  
The TRASHPRESSO requires 40.5 kW during a cycle of 6 hours to operate all of its machines and filters. The energy provided by a solar powered battery that can store up to 80 KW per charge.
In case of bad weather, 2 recycling cycles (12 h) can be operated with the stored energy before the system runs out of energy. The time to store that energy depends on the location and on the weather. 












 




 












How Much is 40.5 kW Of Power ? 



















 





The TRASHPRESSO recycling processes use 100 L of water. No water is lost in the process as it is looped back through three steps of filtration: quartz sand filter, ultra-filtration, and reverse osmosis. 







 





Plastic trash comes from disposable items with a single use. A same item as the bottle cap can be made from different plastics. For recycling, plastic marking is very important. Not all the disposable items are very well recycled. The TRASHPRESSO can recycle all of them once they are correctly sorted. The numbers represent the amount of one trash type to be trasnformed into one Hexa Tile. 







 




 





 





The developed TRASHPRESSO (Flaking, cooking and energy lines) is part of a bigger plan to enable the circular economy. It involves open access to recycled material and product data and shared knowledge about polymers.
Additionally, Miniwiz’ R&D team is developing new portable recycling lines that work independently or together in a closed loop.
A recycling line can even be extended by a part of another one to produce a different outcome. They will recycle paper lined with plastic, metal and textile trash to turn them into sexy products, ready to be consumed and recycled again. 







 




  

 


The Home Recycler   — Coming Soon
A compact and movable recycling line, based on Trashpresso 1 & 2, with the size of any big domestic appliance. Ideally powered by renewable energy, but also by city grid. Miniwiz R&D Lab in Taiwan is working on a new solution to trash pollution. 
 


 


 
Wet Spinning (Option 1.B)
Wet spinning process is suitable for Cellulose derivative family (like CA), part of Nylon family: Aramide (like PPD-T) and Acrylic family (like PAN).



 


 








 





Interested in having your own Trashpresso or activating an existing one? please contact us through the Contact Us section. 




  

 TRASHPRESSO, by MINIWIZ captures the value of single-use plastic, metal, glass, by transforming industrial and household wastes into sustainable building materials, specialty fabrics, furniture and fixtures. After 15 years of intense research and development, MINIWIZ is making a meaningful difference in many areas particularly in the building and construction industries.
TRASHPRESSO is the world’s first mobile industrial-grade plastic trash upcycling platform, sized as small as two industrial refrigerators. It democratizes the collection, sorting and transformation of waste with minimal air/water footprint and almost 0 impact, with only 7kwh power consumption. It can service a community of up to 10,000 with about 500 kg of plastic waste per day.
TRASHPRESSO generates tangible value through turning single-use plastic trash into valuable applications (building materials, utensils, etc) in a 3-minute cycle.
With the cooperation of public/private institutions, TRASHPRESSO is acting as the catalyst for placemaking projects and sustainable positive gentrifications programmes like building schools with local waste in Tibet, beach cleanup ocean-plastic into floor tiles for community centers in Sardinia. Its end product of upcycled waste is currently being utilized in 300,000 sqm of commercial retail, hotels and offices across major international cities and by global brands such as Nike, Philip Morris, Jackie Chan, Nat Geo.
TP engages grassroots communities with over 500 days of gamified activities, educational events, creative workshops inspiring consumers to bring in their own personal plastic waste to produce their own unique durable product to take home immediately. These hands-on campaigns drive adoption to circular consumption behaviour and fulfil MINIWIZ’s desire to: promote positive recycling habits and increase call to action, educate and inspire by highlighting waste issues, recyclability and integrate/demonstrate sustainability and build a deeper sense of community. 

 TAIPEI, Dec. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With countries in the world growingly concerned with issues of climate and environmental changes, uneven distribution of resources, and sustainability, global designers have also started to proactively shift their attention onto social issues. Unlike traditional designs that focused on "product" and "function," designers have turned to "people" and "environment" as the focus of their works, and more and more of them begin to propose different observations and solutions for social issues of sustainable industrial development, wealth gap, and ageing population, changing life through design, and the concept of building better environment through the power of design is becoming more prominent across the world.     TRASHPRESSO by Miniwiz wins 2021 WDIP, they brings TRASHPRESSO to Tibet and builds a school using local wastes/Photo credit: Miniwiz  WDO launched the biennial World Design Impact Prize™ (WDIP) in 2011, encouraging designers to apply design to solve the social, economic, cultural, and environmental problems the world will face in real urban development, in order to enhance world citizens' quality of life and create a better environment. Since the award ceremony at World Design Capital Taipei in 2016, the Fourth WDIP finally called for submissions again after a four-year hiatus. This edition of WDIP focused on the theme of SDGs, and applicants were recommended by WDO members. Taiwan Design Research Institute, a WDO member in Taiwan, recommended TRASHPRESSO by Taiwanese firm Miniwiz to represent Taiwan at this year's WDIP. This year's WDIP jury consisted of five experts in different disciplines, including Chetan Choudhury, an advisor with the Prime Minister's Office of the UAE in Dubai, Teresa Franqueira, associate professor at Aveiro University, and Wenny Kusuma, former UN Women Country Representative in Cambodia. The jurors selected 10 most iconic real cases from a pool of 129 global submissions as finalists, and 170 WDO member organizations around the globe voted for the winners. Miniwiz's TRASHPRESSO won the First Prize of the 2021 WDIP, marking Taiwan's first win at the global design award, a testament to the universal recognition of Taiwan design. "Turning wastes into gold" is the belief and motive Arthur Huang has continued developing since founding Miniwiz. The WDIP-winning TRASHPRESSO is the world's first portable industrial-grade plastic waste recycling platform with a size of merely two industrial refrigerators. It makes the collection, classification, and conversion of garbage more democratic, and consumes only 7,000W of power, leaving minimal air/water footprints. The machine is capable of converting industrial and domestic wastes into valuable materials such as sustainable building supplies, special textiles, and furniture, through 3-minute cycles, and can process up to 500 kg of plastic waste daily for a community of 10,000 people. Now, Miniwiz is bringing TRASHPRESSO to cooperate with global organizations, such as using local wastes to build schools in Tibet, and turning ocean plastics collected through beach cleaning activities into the floor tiles of Sardinia Community Center. Through innovative design thinking, Miniwiz facilitates real changes to the seemingly complicated and irreversible social issues. "Design for a better tomorrow" has become a global trend, and Taiwan design is also exerting its influences in all corners of the world. Source: Taiwan Design Research Institute

Taiwan

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Miniwiz 

<p>Leveraging innovative design thinking, Taiwanese firm Miniwiz launched Trashpresso in 2017. Trashpresso converts industrial and household plastic wastes into sustainable construction materials, furniture, tiles and fabrics. A striking feature is its portability and how it can bring recycling to isolated remote communities globally. With a compact size of about two industrial refrigerators, Trashpresso is able to recycle up to 500 kg of plastic waste, almost equivalent to a community of 10,000 people. Besides its efficiency in converting waste, it also serves as a useful platform to encourage consumers to contribute their plastic waste in return for bringing something useful and unique home. </p>