PhD candidate Matthew Harkness is now exploring the question of what if our body could actually recycle plastic with his Biorecycling Machine. The machine isn’t something big or complicated, it is based on an open-source blueprint of a 3D-printed tattoo machine that he downloaded from GitHub. The concept is that getting a plastic-ink tattoo, your body becomes the recycling machine. Scary, right? Well, the project is merely speculative:
The catch? This approach only works with a certain type of bioplastic, which is generally considered safe for the human body. Petroleum-based plastics, such as the bags that fill our oceans, need not apply.
The project is speculative, meant to prod us to rethink our values. It’s not meant to become an actual commercial product. As Harkness explains over email, his intent was to “interrogate the . . . ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ campaign introduced in the 1970s. Central to this campaign was placing responsibility for recycling plastics onto consumers and in the Biorecycling Machine project, this concept is taken to the extreme.”
Image via the Fast Company
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It induces better crematories yield...
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