I have been collaborating with Dave Hakkens since he was a ‘designer-kid’ starting his studies at Design Academy Eindhoven. As a sustainable design journalist, I wrote about his early projects, hand later his Precious Plastic set of machines inspired my MA Graduation Project, which he helped shape and kindly lent me early prototypes to display at the Vanabbe Museum.

Since I started teaching, I asked Dave if my students could squeeze biomaterials through his machines for plastic, but it was too difficult to set up. Two years later he launched 'Beyond Plastic', along with designer Jannis Kempkens, which included a heat-press that turned food waste into products.

This led to plenty of knowledge exchange, a workshop for my Make Material Sense’s students at their Headquarters, and a summer production of samples for our exhibition at Dutch Design Week.