Embedded Files
Conceptual Understanding: The abundance of resources and raw materials in the industrial age led to the development of a throwaway society, and as resources run out, the many facets of sustainability become a more important focus for designers.
Conceptual Understanding: The result of the throwaway society is large amounts of materials found in landfill, which can be considered as a new source to mine resources from.
Waste mitigation strategies can reduce or eliminate materials directed to landfill:
Discuss
What might be some of the challenges faced with the prevention, monitoring and handling of waste?
Challenges
Prevention:
Monitoring:
Handling:
What might be some solutions a government can implement to deal with the prevention, monitoring and handling of waste?
Solutions
Prevention:
Monitoring:
Handling:
Re-use: Reuse of a product in the same context or in a different context.
Repair: The reconstruction or renewal of any part of an existing structure or device.
To mend/restore/service faulty equipment. Many products are designed so that they be repaired to extend their life-cycle.
Examples: Washing machine belt, shoe soles, lightbulb, inner tube on a bicycle
Re-engineer: To redesign components or products to improve general engineering and their characteristics or performance (speed, energy consumption, etc)
It can also mean that the use of raw materials that were meant for another product or manufacturing process, use environmentally friendly materials, recycle some of the original components to generally improve performance such as shown here with this homemade e-scooter.
Recycle: Recycling refers to using the materials from obsolete products (waste) to create other products.
Recycling consists of processing used materials into novel products in order to avert squandering potentially functional materials. It decreases the consumption of unsullied raw resources, trims down energy usage, lowering air and water pollution by dropping the need for “usual” waste discarding, and lastly lowering greenhouse gas emission
Examples include Glass, Paper, Aluminium cans, Thermoplastics, Newspaper.
Recondition: Rebuilding a product so that it is in an “as new” condition.
Examples include vintage cars, furniture and other products to return them to their original purpose and beauty.
Dematerialisation: The reduction of total material and energy in a product.
Reducing the quantities of materials trying to “do more with less”.
Dematerialization improves product efficiency by saving, reusing or recycling materials and products. It impacts on every stage of the product life cycle: in material extraction; eco-design; cleaner production; environmentally conscious consumption patterns; recycling of waste. It may mean smaller, lighter products and packaging; the replacement of physical products by virtual products (email instead of paper, web pages instead of brochures); home working, and so on.
Methodologies for reduction of waste and pollution
Looking into the current management of pollution (i.e. noise, air pollution) and waste (i.e landfill, incineration)
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change and can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants.
Wastes are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance which is discarded after primary use, or it is worthless, defective and of no use (which can be subjective as one person's idea of waste may whereas another person may find it useful).
Product recovery strategies
Product recovery strategies are important to reduce the waste and pollution. A materials recovery facility, materials reclamation facility, materials recycling facility or Multi re-use facility is a specialized plant that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers.
Designing out waste (DoW) requires the designer to build the principles of using resources efficiently into the design stage of any project. Environmentalists have a large influence on product marketability, designers and manufactures often work together to design products which are deemed as Green/Environmentally friendly. Strategies include:
the prevention, monitoring and handling of waste, coming up with solutions to deal with pollution and waste
product recovery strategies at end-of-life/disposal
energy from waste, reuse of parts of products, recycling from parts of product
circular economy-the use of waste as a resource within a closed loop system
developing new bio-fuels, self-decomposing materials, building products from recyclable materials, reconditioning products and building products with a “cradle to cradle” life-cycle.
making consumers and manufacturers aware of pollutants and the effect on the environment, passing acts/legislation to ban/reduce these pollutants i.e. the EU “Take Back” program and the US “Clean Air Act”. Eco-labeling products for consumer awareness.
following ISO (International standards organisations) 14000 a network of national standards spanning the globe, addressing environmental issues.
Give examples as to why these have been categorised into most preferred and least preferred options:
Product recovery strategies
Recycling: Using the materials from obsolete products to create other products.
Give three other recycling examples (product name, material details and manufacturer)
Product recovery strategies:
Raw material recovery: The processes of separating the component parts of a product to recover the parts and materials.
Almost 90% of a BMW car can be recycled at the end of its life-cycle through raw material recovery at the BMW Group Recycling and Dismantling Center using clear material labelling which enables materials to be sorted in the right way. Here’s how the process works:
The car is drained of all fluids including oil, brake fluid, coolant, etc.
Airbags and belt tensioners are deactivated and the battery is neutralized.
All parts are removed and the body of the car is compacted into a cube.
The cube is shredded into small pieces and then sorted to separate metal from plastics using magnets and currents.
Pieces can be reused as secondary raw material.
Product recovery strategies: WEEE Recovery
WEEE is a complex mixture of materials and components from electrical products that because of their hazardous content, and if not properly managed, can cause major environmental and health problems.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive) is the European Community directive 2012/19/EU on waste electrical and electronic equipment. WEEE is a complex mixture of materials and components that because of their hazardous content, and if not properly managed, can cause major environmental and health problems.
The production of modern electronics requires the use of scarce and expensive resources (e.g. around 10% of total gold worldwide is used for their production).
To improve the environmental management of WEEE and to contribute to a circular economy and enhance resource efficiency the improvement of collection, treatment and recycling of electronics at the end of their life is essential.
Research WEEE on any of the following three products and list the type of materials that are commonly recovered.
Handphone or Laptop
E-Scooter or E-Bike
Refrigerator
or Washing Machine
This Story of Electronics employs the Story of Stuff style to explore the high-tech revolution's collateral damage—25 million tons of e-waste and counting, poisoned workers and a public left holding the bill.
Product recovery strategies: Energy recovery
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of waste. WtE is a form of energy recovery. Most WtE processes produce electricity and/or heat directly through combustion, or produce a combustible fuel commodity, such as methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels.
Closed loop systems or Circular Economy is an economy model in which resources remain in use for as long as possible, from which maximum value is extracted while in use, and the products and materials are recovered and regenerated at the end of the product life cycle.
Explain why the example above is a closed loop systems (also known as circular economy)
Page updated
Report abuse