Comments

James Cheng,
Elizabeth Grayburn
Stella Ho
Siting Lin
Rebecca Wormesley

Final PSS

Product Service System

Issue: Recycling of Batteries

Research/Background:

Australia is one of the countries with the highest per capita waste generation.

[Source: http://www.benefits-of-recycling.com/interestingfactsaboutrecycling/]

This means that on average each person in Australia produces more waste than other individuals in almost all other countries.

The most common form of hazardous waste generated by Australians is in the form of batteries.

[Source: http://www.benefits-of-recycling.com/interestingfactsaboutrecycling/]

We all use batteries in our everyday life, whether it be in remote controls, gaming devices, mobiles phones, cameras, etc.

In Australia, it is estimated that on average, each person will go through around 18 batteries a year and a household with children will use an astounding 109 batteries each year.

[source: www.sita.com.au]

However many people don’t realise the danger of disposing batteries in a regular household bin. While safe during use, we need to ensure that all batteries, both single use or rechargeable, are disposed of correctly at the end of their life.

Each year 8,000 tonnes of hazardous battery waste ends up in Australian landfill.

[source: http://www.australianfranchises.com.au/articles/battery-world-launches-battery-recycling-program.html]

Rechargeable batteries contain metals such as cadmium, which can be harmful to the environment. Rechargeable batteries commonly contain toxic metals such as nickel-cadmium (NiCad), nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion, which can harm the environment by contaminating soil and groundwater.
Lead acid batteries contain lead and sulfuric acid, which can both be toxic for the environment. When recycled, the lead, sulfuric acid, and plastic casing can be recovered, helping make lead acid batteries 96% recyclable. 

Current Solutions:
Local councils have set up collection bins/outlets for people to dispose of their used batteries. However the percentage of people using them is very low. People need more of an incentive to recycle their batteries, and these recycling point should also be more accessbile, or in places that people frequent often.

Concept:

My concept is a fun dispensing device for disposing of batteries. Consumers drop their batteries into the slot at the top and time it to try and get the battery to fall in the rotating slot at the bottom. If they make it it, they receive a coupon or a ticket or something like that. It is similar to arcade games and machines where you can win tickets.

The product is wall mounted and can be located in local shopping malls, supermarkets, or other places that people frequent often. The inside back wall of the machine (green in the diagram) could be used as advertising space, offering companies an incentive to donate coupons for the machine in exchange for free advertising. Batteries can be easily collected by council employees but emptying the bottom part using a key to open it.

The lightbulb conspiracy is an insightful short film/documentary that follows the development and execution of premeditated obsolescence throughout the 1900s and early twenty first century. Examples include anything from early light bulbs to Apple’s ipod, and are used to highlight the impact that these designs as well as our attitudes are having on our environment. Millions and millions of tonnes of waste enter landfill and dump sites due to consumers discontinuation and replacement of product after product after product. The western world is extremely wastefull, and this film aims to educate designers as well as consumers about the impact their actions are having.

It cannot be argued that Edison’s invention of the light bulb in the 1881 was one of the most significant inventions, even significant to this very day – as the light bulbs we use now have barely changed. However the invention of this long-lasting consumer product saw a downturn in consumer needs, as it did not need to be replaced as often as previous sources of light. This saw the start of product ‘life-fixing’, where designers would purposely design products intended to have a short life span, to encourage consumer spending. At the time this was not seen as unethical as it is today. Designers did this to encourage more consumer spending and to lift the economy, not thinking about the impacts of these actions on the environment. As more and more products were designed with an ‘end of life’ and they began to reach these, more and more waste was created, and people slowly began to realise how this was degrading our environment.

Today our society is very aware and conscious of how we are affecting our environment, and more emphasis is placed on protecting the earth for generations to come. Product life-fixing is therefore now seen as unethical and extremely wastefull. This video is important to designer and consumers alike, as it informs us of how the choices we make, and the designs we create, have the potential to either save or destroy our environment. After watching this video, designers will inevitably be more conscious or their design efforts, and aim to create designs that will protect and help restore our environment. Or at least won’t affect it as much. In order to enforce sustainability we have to eliminate planned obsolesce, and encourage people that longer-lasting products are better.

Peer Comments

Zenon Zoltaszek
Dale Wakeham
Anurag Shivach
Sarita Parto
Andrew Bae

Cormack Packaging

ChocAlot Fun ‘Squeeze’ pack is a fun new way for little masterchefs to create their own atristic toast and sandwiches. Conventional chocolate spread packaging in a jar is difficult for children to open, is very messy to use and requires extra washing up of the knife. With ChocAlot fun ‘Squeeze’ pack, not only does it eliminate mess when making a sandwhich, it is also easy to open, and since it requires no cutlery, additional washing up is eliminated.

ChocAlot Fun ‘Squeeze’ Pack uses bright packaging to appeal to children when on the store shelf, but still follows a similar style of clear packaging with a white cap, so that it is still identifiable as a chocolate spread.

The shape and form of the package indicates the squeezable nature of the product, making the product simple and intiuative to use.

Focus Group Feedback

-Looks too much like coke bottle
-improve overall form
-work on graphic design
-the shape of the bottle would cause some of the nutella to get stuck
-improve renderings
-work on presentation of posters

Dissasembly and Redesign

Video Reflection 2

An Inconvenient Truth is a powerful video that has changed our society in many ways. This documentary has challenged the way that ordinary people view the world, and has the opened the eyes of many to see that their actions actually have a large impact on the environment around them.

We have reached a point where our human consumption and level of destruction to earth has far exceeded the earth’s ability to replenish and regrow. Our natural planet is no longer able to compensate for our demanding lifestyle. Evidence of this are presented in the documentary with convincing data, measurements and predictions to do with carbon dioxide, pollution and global warming. People have to remember that the earth’s resources are limited, and there is only so much we can take from it without giving anything back.

The documentary talks about global warming and the earth’s environment not as a political responsibility, but as a moral responsibility. I think this is important, as it is individuals themselves that need to implement changes and reduce their own impact or ‘carbon footprint.’ The government cannot do this for us.

As Industrial Designers, our actions have considerably more impact than the average person because our concepts and designs have the potential to be used on much larger scales. It is therefore important for us to design products in a way that does not have a detrimental cost to the environment. This could be done by considering our material choice, the amount of material that is needed, and if there is any way to minimise the amount of material required without compensating the strength or structure of the product. We could think about using recycled material, or using the material in a way that it can be recycled after the product has been consumed or reached the end of its life. Another approach might be to design a product that also encourages others to recycle or be more environmentally aware, and we should also consider the source of energy for products that need to be powered by an external source. Can we use solar energy instead of electricity, or electricity instead of gas?

Designer should constantly be thinking about how can we make our products more environmentally friendly or use cleaner energy. This documentary just solidifies something that we have known for years, but have failed to acknowledge. We have no excuse to ignore it anymore.

Video Reflection

Its important for industrial designers to understand recycling, as well as how packaging is made, in order to utilise this knowledge and apply it produce products that are environmentally sound. The more designers that watch these videos, the more environmentally friendly the field of industrial design will be.

The first series “how it is made” is great because it allows us to understand the entire process of manufacture – from raw material to final product – for a large number of different packaging alternatives; cardboard, tubes, tetrapak, cans, bottles/jars and glass. These videos are invaluable to an industrial designer, not only for their information, but because they cover a large number of topics and explain them in a way that is easy to understand and learn from.

 It is also essential to understand the recycling aspect on the product life cycle, and this video is excellent in showing exactly what products are, and which ones arnt recycled. I find it important to understand just how much waste is created from design and use of products/packaging that is environmentally damaging.

The second series ‘ giving packaging a new life’ is just as informative and resourceful as the first. This series focuses more on the recycling processes of products and packaging, and it is useful to see which materials are best for recycling. This has definitely influenced my material choices for the packaging assignment. It was interesting to learn how once recycled, the original material is used for something entirely different that its original use, and also that different colours are recycled differently. Also it was interesting to learn how recycling is sorted with such a machine.

It was also interesting to learn about tetra packs, because they are so complex i did not understand how they could be recycled. It was good to see how many different processes are required to extract

Packaging is a large industry, due to the sheer mass production and manufacture at lightning fast speeds. It is therefore potentially very destructive to the environment, however with the introduction of these recycling techniques of different materials, the industry can give a little bit back to the environment as well.

Industrial designers need to be made aware of the impact that their designs have on the environment, and videos such as these will definitely open their eyes to the world of packaging, materials and recycling, and hopefully this will influenced their future material and design choices.