Task 2B - Sustainable Consumption

The rate we consume, replace and throw away products is far to excessive for a safe and sustainable world. This is driven by Companies who design electronics, who every 12 to 18 months produce a new and improved product, which makes its predecessors obsolete. This persuades consumers to purchase the product in order to stay current with trend or to have a new feature on their phone or device. Designers should be enforced to design products which are long lasting or which can be upgraded, and this can be done using high quality materials and designing products that can be upgraded using a modular design.

The idea of modular design will greatly reduce the impact of electronic waste, as only broken parts will need to be replaced, instead of the entire device ending up in landfill where a replacement is sent to the customer. It can also be said that, fixing broken electronics is not made easy and usually the cost of repair exceeds the cost of a buying a new product. Another simple actions can be taken by electronic companies such as Sony for example to have a universal charger which can charge the majority of their products, reducing resources, energy and the amount of waste ending up in landfill. They don't need to produce custom accessories that only fit one model of their range.

Designers should also be required to design with product End Of Life in mind. This takes into account the life of the product after its use and how recycling, reuse or disposal will be carried out. Material choice, material coupling and modular design are very important in producing a sustainable product and should be of high consideration by designers. Material choice, such as the use of aluminum, should be considered carefully as the embodied energy used for the extraction and production of this material is of a high level.

If the use of aluminum in the design is necessary, using recycled aluminum will greatly reduce the sustainable impact of the product as the energy used is only 10% of that of virgin aluminum. The choice to use toxic chemicals such as flame retardant, solvents and PVC in products will later be released back into the environment during use and disposal of the product, poisoning consumers and the environment.

Correct and educated material coupling is also a way to greatly reduce environmental impact as is always for the product to be disassembled at the end of its life where parts can be recycled or reused in the manufacture of other products.

EcoREDESIGN - Tiffany Kettle Disassembly

- With the help of www.greenflyonline.org, we disassembled a 3 year old Tiffany brand cordless Kettle, and analyzed the products environmental Foot print and impact.

- The day to day use of the Product, using large amounts of Water and Electricity, was the most resource intensive part of the Product Lifecycle.

DisassemblyTeam Members

http://gleblabazine.blogspot.com/

http://njbaroni.blogspot.com/

http://patgates.blogspot.com/

http://ryandaugherty.blogspot.com/

Task 2A - Understanding Recycling

After watching the videos on recycling technologies and practices in “Giving Packaging a New Life” by Duales Systems of Germany, I am amazed by the recycling methods and techniques used in current day recycling.

The use of infrared sensors in order to differentiate and automatically separate different types of plastic, astounded me, and included such plastics as PS, PE and PET, as well as the use of chemical solvents and rotary kilns to remove any impurities from PET chips. From sorting by color, to sorting by size, to removing metals from plastics with industrial magnets, a lot of thought has clearly been given to the recycling efforts by institutions that run recycling plants. I think about the effort that went into building these plants and the machinery, but also the effort that went into designing the stages of organized recycling.

The plants shown in these videos didn't just happen, with alot of effort is being put into reusing consumed materials. Technology such as the Opto-Electronic scanners combined with the use of highly accurate compressed air jets to pinpoint pieces of glass, and blow them out, showing the growing importance and advancement of technology in relation to Recycling. Such tools are without a doubt designed with these sole recycling uses in mind, and the fact that they are designed specifically for recycling plants shows to me the dedication that governments and companies have for the cause of sustainability.

Hearing that we can limit the need to mine and drill for natural resources in the earth is promising, as it has been proven in existing plants that recycled products, can in many cases, be completely reused for new products. Processed and reused aluminium, for example, according to the video is no problem for manufacturers; aluminium sheets made via recycled aluminium only uses one twentieth of the energy needed to create new aluminium goods by other means.

Even with all of this technology, however, sorting and reusing materials in plants is still an issue. How much would ordinary people in society know about recycling plants, then? I want to believe that people can change, that information will spread about what technologies are out there to make it happen, but yet, we still see such large amounts of trash around in public areas. It will take a lot of effort and a long time for people to change, and I hope we’re moving in the ecological direction.

My Foot Print Results. Shameful.

As you can tell by this title, I am extremely suprised with these results.

Even with all the current options currently installed in our house, such as Water saving shower fittings, electricity/energy saving light bulbs, i would still apparently consume 7.35 planets.

Society has started to realise the resources they abuse are not all renewable, and attitudes have changed, to switching off appliances that aren't in use, solar power, and renewable and recycled materials being used in the building of alot of houses, along with energy and water saving appliances.

The renewable and recyclable revolution is here...