Task2: Recycling

Aluminium, tin, paper, glass, leather, rubber, plastic and so many others can be recycled and some of them can even be recycled 100% for reuse. This really open the eye for industry designer like us. This makes me realize that it is very important for us to understand most of the recyclable materials. So that when we are designing, we can keep this in mind and try to use material that has a high proportion of recyclable percentage. So that we can play a role in saving our already highly polluted earth.

Technology has done a great help for us when it comes to recycling. The rubbish sorting factory and the Reverse Vending machine are two great examples. The rubbish-sorting factory can sort the rubbish into their related and still reduce the work and cost of sorting by more than 50%. The reverse vending machine also help to sort the rubbish people throw away in the shopping center out according to their own category which is in average around 30 ton of rubbish per shopping center. This help to save the massive amount of sorting out work afterward. I believe that with the advance of technology in the future, more and more materials will be able to be recycled at a much lower cost and higher recyclable percentage.

The different type of rubbish recycling and more and more sophisticated way of handling the rubbish, like the disposal of different color glass into different bin, shows that more and more people are caring about recycling and want to make the earth a greener place. In term of consumer point of view, this show that consumer nowadays prefer greener product than the non-green one. This give a great indication to how important is it for industry designer to design a green product if they want their design to be commercially successful.

Overall, Nike give a very good example of “Considered Design”, it shows how it makes use of its 4900 ton of leather waste and 8000 ton of wasted rubber. The key point here come to the design of the shoe that make use of those wasted material which otherwise will be throw away. So when we are designing, we need to pay great attention to the material use, their recyclability, can we make use of the wasted materials and if the materials that we use are bio-degradable after they are being disposed. These are very important if we wanted to play a role in building a greener earth.