Looking around me right now, plastic doesn't really see much use as a bulk material. It's more for specialized small objects, coatings, etc.

Food containers. Small formed inexpensive objects like straws and cutlery. PVC pipes.

Cars have a decent amount of plastic in the interior but still not as a structural element.

Windows, maybe? Though the quality would seem to matter a lot there unless you want partially opaque windows....

Enormous amounts of furniture are made of plastic. Not just outdoor patio furniture.

Storage containers of all kinds.

Fabrics. From clothes to sofas to window shades to backpacks to fake "pleather". Less and less natural materials are used in fabrics these days.

Signage such as large vinyl billboards or building-covering ads.

Big electric appliances such as vacuum cleaners are mostly plastic these days.

Cables and pipes of all kinds, both indoor and outdoor and under ground. Not big objects, but there are many of them.

Composite materials. Things like Corian (a kind of silica-plastic composite) is popular in kitchens.

You mentioned coatings. So much furniture is industrially coated with polyurethane or similar plastic polymers.

Plastic is absolutely everywhere.

Plexiglass and other brands of acrylic glass.

Heh. Reading this makes me realise that my comment was basically idiotic. I appreciate this!

I personally own tons of plastic crates, I'm just not with them at the moment, so it slipped my mind.

Its a shame that plastic isn't particularly easy for a hobbyist to experiment with. It seems like with some experimentation someone could probably come out with usable designed for chairs, desks, etc. that could then be either brought to market or open sourced.

There is a pretty good video on YouTube from a younger person recycling HDPE plastic. It is pretty easily formable at 350F, so can be melted in a common oven.

https://youtu.be/rpXq6mnbCus

Do you need to worry about offgassing if you do this or is it generally safe as long as you melt it rather than burning it?

I love that the kid is using his parents actual oven :D

Someone recommended using my home oven for baking open my headlamp enclosure. The idea is to melt the glue holding the lens in place so you can e.g. add bmw halo lights to your headlamp. Problem is that glue is likely toxic then you’re cooking food in it later. So I wouldn’t try that, esp when an old electric stove w/ oven can be had for $50 that can run in your backyard

When my dad had a shop that is what we did, got an old electric oven. Had it setup so we could take off the door and use thermal blankets to cover large metal pieces we'd treat that were larger than could fit in one bake.

5:56 "so then, avoiding the awkwardly placed dog..."

Well done narrative and video. Thank you for sharing this.

> Windows, maybe? Though the quality would seem to matter a lot there unless you want partially opaque windows....

Bathroom windows and shower doors? Make it a feature, not a bug.

Mhm.

Personally it feels as if we need a better market for, well, 'not quite perfect' items, for lack of better terminology.

Not having a super shiny perfect shower door is really not the end of the world. It's gonna be covered in limescale in about a week unless you're super meticulous anyway.

It's kind of broken that we have an enormous infrastructure around brand new things whilst buying second hand or refurbished is usually a case of scouring ebay or pawn shops.

Embrace the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

It’s funny you bring Japanese culture because one the contrary of the article you link, the Japanese are quite obsessed with (visual) perfection. Also everything here come too much plastic wrapping, like every cookie in a 10 cookies box having its own wrapping.

The packing starts to nake sense once you consider the very high air humidity (90-95% saturation) of air in Japan & during the summer the air is both humid and hot. Unless the bag is air tightly resealable or each piece is individually sealed, you need to consume the single bag of food at once as the rest will otherwise quickly go bad in the hot humid air.

Indeed!

I personally find it way more comfortable to be in a sort of ramshackle environment with random bits and bobs. An old country house with idiosyncracies, nothing matches.

A perfect shiny kitchen with all the matching bits and no signs of wear - no thanks!

There's lots of institutional type furniture that is manufactured using mixed recycled plastics.

Benches and outdoor tables and things like that.

I bought a great recycled plastic picnic table a year ago. The great thing is that it has a 40 year warranty. The downside is that it cost slightly more than a virgin plastic table, and much more than most people would ever spend on a picnic table.

Plastic is being used for roads, mixed into normal asphalt to form a composite material. It sounds like the worst idea ever, though: today's roads are already feeding enormous amounts of dust pollution into the environment as we drive over them. Do we want plastic dust?

I buy recycled 3d printing filament and use it for printing stuff I used around my house. The recycled plastic so far seems strong enough for my purpose.

there was an ad on .. youtube or tv about people in east asia doing just that. Collecting all kinds of plastics in the sea and making road material with it.