Submitted by Administrator on Thu, 17/01/2019 - 08:01
A new £1M grant from UK Research and Innovation has just been awarded to develop the 'Cambridge Centre for Circular Economy Approaches to Plastic Waste', with the aim to facilitate inter disciplinary projects to tackle the challenge of plastic waste. The 18-month project involves partners from many University of Cambridge departments: Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Chemistry, Engineering, Materials, Physics, and Zoology. The Centre will run a number of events to engage a wide range of stakeholders to align the research with real-world challenges and maximize the impact.
Professor Jeremy J Baumberg, FRS will be leading one of the projects on recycling plastic waste to produce high value 3D printing filament. One of the major barriers for 3D printing in low resource areas is availability of printing filament. At the same time, many of these regions have a problem with plastic waste; the aim of this project to tackle both of these problems through developing recycled plastic filament suitable for locally making 3D printed products. The project will include partners in Africa to produce laboratory instruments such as microscopes.