SAMOA – Shocked by the amount of plastic littering in Samoa, he hatched a plan involving a 3D printer.

When Lionel Taito-Matamua attended his grandmother’s funeral in Samoa, he was shocked to see the sheer volume of plastic waste in the country.

He discovered there were no systems in Samoa to recycle plastic, “so most of the time it just ends up in the landfill, in many of their landfills, or else it’s buried, burnt, it ends up in oceans, rivers and lakes or on the side of the road”.

That trip in 2010 inspired the Victoria University design innovation student to devote his Master’s thesis to finding a way to help Samoa make use of its waste plastic, by turning it into something useful and helping the environment, a project he’s been working on ever since.

It’s not only an issue in Samoa and the Pacific, it’s a global issue in terms of waste management and plastic waste. He speaks to The Wireless about the innovation:

WIRELESS: Is there recycling in Samoa?

Taito-Matamua: No recycling that we know of. The only thing they do collect is glass bottles and also scrap metals, those are the only things they do collect because those are the only materials that there’s money in, in terms of exportation.

So there’s no money in plastics in the Pacific islands and no money in rubber, in terms of car tyres and truck tyres.

Most of the time it just ends up in the landfill, in many of their landfills, or else it’s buried, burnt, it ends up in oceans, rivers and lakes or on the side of the road.

WIRELESS: So what is your concept?

Taito-Matamua: It’s the whole idea of using all of this waste material including plastic, organising it all, and then turning that into 3D printable material, which is what we call filament and using 3D printers and those materials in our communities in the Pacific to make other things, useful items, stuff they can actually export this time. Now we’re trying to transform that non-exportable plastic as raw material, into something that’s exportable in terms of a product, souvenirs and stuff that could be sent away overseas.

WIRELESS: Do you think there should be more support for young people with ideas?

Taito-Matamua: I was lucky enough to actually be able to do a thesis and actually get the idea out on paper and then get all this support from different people.

But we’ve got a lot of Pacific and Maori communities that don’t get the educational opportunities that a lot of us do have … but they still have that drive. Having more in terms of support would be awesome.