[leggomylibro]

You can recycle polyethylene pretty easily on its own, and a lot of those plastic wraps that the article says aren't recycled are made out of LDPE. HDPE and LDPE are great materials for a lot of things that you might otherwise make out of wood or 3D-print. It's easy to machine, and it can be very strong and rigid for its weight.

Basically, you just shred the donor plastic, heat it to 300-350F, press the air out, and let it cool. With LDPE plastic wrap, you can fold and stack it instead of shredding it. You can also get cool tie-dye effects by using multiple colors in the same batch.

You can use plywood for the walls of your molds, and a toaster oven that you don't plan on cooking with ever again can be a reasonable furnace. To compress the hot plastic, try making a loose-fitting lid and tamping or clamping it down while the plastic heats.

But make sure that it is polyethylene - some plastics, like PVC, release highly toxic fumes. And others, like polypropylene, are often mixed with plasticizers which evaporate into nasty fumes and reduce the quality of the recycled plastic.

[userbinator]

Notably, plastic bags are a plentiful source of nearly pure polyethylene, which being composed entirely of only hydrogen and carbon essentially in the form of a petroleum wax, is also one of the safest plastics to work with. The decomposition products of fluoro/chloropolymers can be deadly.

[pixl97]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpXq6mnbCus&

>How To Recycle HDPE Bottle Lids Into Flawless Flat Sheet Material

Decent video on how to make HDPE into new materials