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Startup Belgian Company Named After Yuma

A Kickstarter campaign launched this week will spend the next month raising money to print 3-D sunglasses out of recycled plastic. The startup is based in Belgium, but its name is inspired by Yuma, Arizona.

The Antwerp-based company w.r.yuma said it is finally finished with two years of prototyping and testing materials — and now ready to recycle various plastics into sunglasses.

Using parts of car dashboards and soda bottles, among other trash, the plastic is fed into a 3-D printer, melted to form strands of wire and layered together to construct sunglasses frames. 

Founder Sebastiaan de Neubourg said he named the company after Yuma because it's "one of the sunniest places on Earth." He says he wants people to have a different look at waste and the materials cycle.

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Heather van Blokland was a host at KJZZ from 2016 to 2021.