My name is Gary Dusek and I’m the founder of Precious Plastic NYC and the nonprofit Waste Reclamation Action Program. We have a microfactory in the South Bronx that takes plastic waste out of the environment and makes products and art out of it.
Plastic is a design flaw. We're putting permanent materials in disposable applications and it ends up being a problem for the environment. It's a massive nuisance. It's destroying ecosystems. The act of taking plastic out of the neighborhood has myriad social and economic benefits. Is that gonna work on an industrial scale? I don't know, but we're trying to find out.
My grandfather was a Depression-era Czech immigrant who grew up dirt poor on a farm in Texas. There was no such thing as waste for him. On the farm, you used everything. I think that is directly inspirational to my work. That philosophy is really very pragmatic–it's not ideological at all, it’s just good practice.
We’re modeling and demonstrating the direct transformation of plastic waste into something usable. All of the plastic that’s ever been made still exists, so what do we do with it? For a lot of people, recycling is a dead word. That's why we don't use it–we say reclamation because it's an action word.
Emotionally and philosophically, I get a lot out of it. I like to be of service, at the end of the day. Plastic waste is a massive problem and I feel good about doing something about it. I'm trying to clean up the community and provide resources for the community. It's about empowerment. Half the people that I talk to have no idea where their products are coming from. They have no idea how they're manufactured. We send our waste all over the world and get back products to sell to ourselves, which sucks value and resources out of our pockets. People taking action in their own community is what it's all about. It’s about having agency and having enough resources to be self-sufficient in some way.
Plastic is a design flaw. We're putting permanent materials in disposable applications and it ends up being a problem for the environment. It's a massive nuisance. It's destroying ecosystems. The act of taking plastic out of the neighborhood has myriad social and economic benefits. Is that gonna work on an industrial scale? I don't know, but we're trying to find out.
My grandfather was a Depression-era Czech immigrant who grew up dirt poor on a farm in Texas. There was no such thing as waste for him. On the farm, you used everything. I think that is directly inspirational to my work. That philosophy is really very pragmatic–it's not ideological at all, it’s just good practice.
We’re modeling and demonstrating the direct transformation of plastic waste into something usable. All of the plastic that’s ever been made still exists, so what do we do with it? For a lot of people, recycling is a dead word. That's why we don't use it–we say reclamation because it's an action word.
Emotionally and philosophically, I get a lot out of it. I like to be of service, at the end of the day. Plastic waste is a massive problem and I feel good about doing something about it. I'm trying to clean up the community and provide resources for the community. It's about empowerment. Half the people that I talk to have no idea where their products are coming from. They have no idea how they're manufactured. We send our waste all over the world and get back products to sell to ourselves, which sucks value and resources out of our pockets. People taking action in their own community is what it's all about. It’s about having agency and having enough resources to be self-sufficient in some way.
