Mini Eiffel Tower made of recycled ocean waste erected at Lake Most
A mini Eiffel Tower made entirely out of recycled ocean waste has been erected near Lake Most in north Bohemia. The replica will be one of the centrepieces of the Olympic Festival, organised by the Czech Olympic Committee, taking place on the shores of the country’s largest pit lake during the Games.
The 12.5 metre tall Eiffel Tower, made out of approximately 800,000 recycled plastic bottles, which translated into 1.3 tons of ocean waste, was manufactured by a Czech start-up called 3DDen.
The replica of the famous Paris landmark consists of more than 1,500 separate pieces, which were manufactured and partially assembled at the company’s workshop in Prague, before being brought to the festival site at Lake Most.
To process the ocean plastic into a 3D printer filament, experts from 3DDen had to come up with some special technology, explains the company’s CEO Jan Hřebabecký:
“We call it OPET and it is plastic fished out of the ocean. You can't tell at first glance or by touch that it is recycled plastic from seawater. The difference only becomes apparent during the printing process. The material requires very specific conditions for flow, temperature and cooling, but I won’t tell you any details, because that’s our production secret.”
The company has been working on the model of Eiffel Tower since mid-February. Jan Přindiš, a developer at 3Dden, says it took them about six months to learn how to work with the material, which is significantly softer than regular plastic, but also more difficult to process. The different shades of grey on the final product have been achieved by cooling, he says:
“It is a regular PET plastic that is desalinated and dried. It's milky, because the polymer structure has crystallised during the production process. Once it crystallises, it forms a white base. But if it cools quickly, it doesn't crystallize and the material remains beautifully transparent.”
Another challenge was to come up with the right shape of the individual pieces so that the final product would hold together.
The 3DDen start-up normally uses ocean waste to make interior decorations, wall tiles, and sports medals and trophies. While the material comes all the way from the Pacific, its processing is worthwhile, says Mr. Hřebabecký:
“Local residents are rewarded with clean drinking water or food in exchange for collecting and harvesting this waste. Some of the plastic is sorted on site, while the rest is processed in Switzerland. We are the only one in the world who make such a huge range of products out of this plastic material.”
The Olympic Festival in Most will be held on the same dates as the Summer Games in Paris, from Friday, July 26, until August 11. The area includes a sports ground for 52 sports, as well as a fan zone, a stage for concerts and a summer cinema.
