My name is Sid Ramnathsing, and I have written an article on behalf of my robotics team at the American School of The Hague. It is about our ongoing project that we have been working on, which turns plastic into 3d printing filament for our school…
Nestled in the STEM center at the American School of The Hague lies Trojan Robotics, one of ASH’s 3 FIRST Tech Challenge teams, of which I am a part of. We are a team of 13 international high school students with 15 nationalities, participating in the FIRST Tech Challenge: an international high school robotics league with more than 8000 teams. Over the past 3 months, we have been working on something special that could benefit our entire community: A bike powered plastic shredding machine that converts plastic waste into usable 3d filament. This project has been months in the making, and is almost completed.
This idea for this project came at the beginning of the school year, when our robotics program started back up again for the season. We observed the sheer amount of 3d printed filament that our team and the other 2 teams at ASH were using, as we used them both as prototypes and final components. Not only was this expensive for the teams, but it was also incredibly unsustainable, because it forced us to wastefully dispose of filament from used for things like supports or failed 3d prints. Therefore, we decided to create a solution. Our minds immediately sprung the idea of finding some way to recycle the filament, and turn it back into usable 3d printing filament. Fortunately, this has already been extensively researched, meaning that developing this project would not take much time. However, a traditional plastic shredding machine and filament extruder wouldn’t work for our goals, because they use a lot of energy, which would potentially make this project more unsustainable instead of more sustainable. That would transgress our goal of increasing the sustainability at our school, which would make the project worthless. Therefore, when brainstorming alternative solutions, we were inspired by the Dutch cycling culture and decided to use a bike to power our shredding machine. This would keep the project as sustainable as possible while also adding a cultural touch to it.
To make this all possible, we partnered up with a local Dutch school, Praktijkcollege Het Metrum, who gave us an old, recycled bike that we could use to power the shredder in exchange for donating the first kilogram of filament produced to them. The shredder and extruder itself we purchased normally. Now, as of April 2026, we are assembling the shredding machine, and it should be done by the end of the season. We are incredibly excited to showcase this project to others and proud of the work that we put into it over the season, as we believe that it could make a serious impact on waste at our school and in our community. We are planning to open the project up to anyone who might want to shred their plastic, so feel free to reach out to us if you would like to at ftcteam24090@gmail.com.