News / Venezuela

Venezuelan engineers turn plastic trash into car parts

Wednesday, 18 July 2018 3:45 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 18 July 2018 3:48 PM ]

Albermar Dominguez works at Nedraki's office in the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, Venezuela, July 4, 2018. (Photo by Reuters)

Two young engineers have found an opportunity amid a collapsing economy in Venezuela - inside a garbage dump full of broken electronic hardware.

They are melting the plastic waste down and feeding it through 3D printers to make intricate pieces such as car parts. These have become increasingly hard to obtain in Venezuela as dysfunctional currency controls restrict the import of basic materials.

Albermar Dominguez and John Naizzir produce only a kilogram of plastic printing filament a day, but they aim to help once-wealthy Venezuela’s vanishing manufacturing sector by making it cheaper for companies that depend on expensive imports.

It’s a sign of how an unprecedented crisis has spurred some young people to innovate following five years of economic contraction caused by failed state-led policies and a plunge in global oil prices.

“People don’t believe that technology is being developed in the country,” said Dominguez, 26.

Many of their former classmates at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas have already left Venezuela, joining an exodus of over a million people amid widespread shortages of food and medicine. Annual inflation has hit almost 50,000 percent and Caracas ranks as one of the world’s most dangerous cities.

Dominguez said he had visited the United States to learn from people in the 3D printing industry, after becoming interested in recycling waste.

(Source: Reuters)

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