A Canadian charity is hoping cannabis consumers will start thinking outside the box by recycling used plastic pot packaging to help make prosthetic limbs.
Just over a week since legalization customers have already started to raise concerns about the amount of packaging that comes with a pot purchase.
Now a Nova Scotia non-profit has come up with a unique way to transform that waste into something worthwhile.
After hearing the complaints about the excess waste, Kindness 3D came up with the idea of using shredded plastic to create artificial limbs at a fraction of the regular cost and faster too, by using a 3D printer.
It started by shredding donated lids from drinks bottles and now hopes to collect tops from cannabis containers.
“We saw that there was no plan in the province of a way to take care of this, so we thought we’d put ourselves out there to be the first ones that want to start collecting, and want to start breaking down and reusing this plastic,” Jake Boudreau from Kindness 3D told CTV Atlantic.
“If what we do can offer just a little bit of hope to somebody, we’re happy with that. But to see it go so far and to see so much growth and so much potential from it, it’s exciting.”
After the plastic has been shredded three times it can then be fed into the 3D printer.
The prosthetics are donated to people around the world who can’t afford them.
And since news of the project came out, local businesses are offering their premises as drop-off points for packaging – from Maritime smoke shop chain Mary Jane to the Atomic Café coffee shop.
“Why not make it a good thing? I have kids of my own and you know it’s just a great thing that he’s doing,” Scott Doucette, owner of Mary Jane’s, told CTV Atlantic.
Café owner Brian Larter explained that the public can take their plastic to his business where it will be stored and collected once a week.
Boudreau hopes to get the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation on board to collect as many lids as he can.
--- With files from CTV Atlantic News' Heidi Petracek
