Lakes Area Precious Plastic Lab is holding a special holiday "manufacture and acquire" event, where residents can come to learn about plastic waste and participate in some hands-on recycling and art activities.

The event will be held at the Pope/Douglas Solid Waste Management Office/Household Hazardous Waste Facility at 2115 Jefferson Street, Alexandria from 3pm to 5pm on Saturday, November 20th.

Precious Plastic Lab is a plastic recycling maker space located in the Otter Tail County Recycling Center. The laboratory was launched last year due to a grant from a game changer from the West Central Initiative. Pope/Douglas is the financial and donation sponsor of the laboratory. The plastic laboratory has paper shredders, compression furnaces, injection molding machines and molds, as well as extruders that can be used to recycle waste plastic into bowls, tiles, letters, or artwork.

Precious Plastic is a global community of recycling innovators who provide open source designs for machines that can convert ordinary plastic waste into useful products and works of art. Communities all over the world have Precious Plastic workshops where they collect plastic, shred it, and make products from recycled plastic.

The goal of Precious Plastic is to allow people to treat plastic as a "precious" resource, by using waste plastic to make durable and beautiful items instead of disposable items.