Fahrenholz 1

Alexis Fahrenholz

Professor Debra Jizi

UWRT 1104

31 October 2017

Double Entry Journal

Citation: Designing with Recycled Materials. New York, N.Y: Films Media Group, 2011.

Internet resource.

Its no good thinking about how a product Yes we do and should care about how a
looks and performs during its life. You need product looks but the product needs to go
to think about what will happen at the end of beyond that. The product should come from a
its life cycle. You need to look at the recycled source and be able to be recycled
environmental impacts of production, after it, or parts of it break. Like the quote
reducing energy consumption, raw materials, says, over and over again.
and cost of manufacture. You have to explore
ways of reducing waste and find new
techniques to separate and use recycled and
sustainable materials. And you need to make
products safer and longer lasting so they can
easily be repaired or reused over and over
again. (Films Media Group 0:14-0:51).

Pretty soon students could be sitting on
chairs made from sony playstations. And
youll see how large scale manufacturers are
turning discarded fridges into parts for
washing machines, cars, and plant pots.
Consumer demand for good design is
neverending (Films Media Group 1:05-
1:17).
Im pretty much just focused on the furniture
aspect but this is exactly what Im talking
about. And of course I would preferably like
normal everyday trash but pretty much
anything you find at the dump is what I want
to be recycled. And good design should
involve being good for the environment.

If you ever go to a landfill site in Europe This is something that all countries around
these days you wont see any electrical need to have.
products. Thats because in 2007 a new law
came into force. Its called the WEEE for
short, and it means that manufacturers or
electrical goods have to meet strict targets for
recycling all the electronical products we
throw away (Films Media Group 1:50-2:12).
 Fahrenholz 2

If youre wondering what happened to your What I am trying to learn more about is how
playstation casing after you sent it off to be to design such things with the recycled
repaired, it could well be right here. All the materials and this is a good description of the
ribs from this chair are made from recycled pla. Needing to actually think and plan out
plastic. But using recycled plastic means how to be able to make the furniture with
thinking very differently about the ways we already used materials. Like it says adapting
design. If theyre working with new, or your design according to how the recycled
virgin, materials, designers can specify the materials act.
type and properties of the plastic they want to
use. For school chairs that normally means
polypropylene because its tough and
relatively cheap. But with recycled materials,
like playstation casings, you have to find out
what plastics it contains, what their properties
are, and then you have to adapt your design
accordingly (Films Media Group 3:03-3:47).

Finding out what kinds of plastics are in That was the idea I had with making the
playstation covers menat grinding them up furniture would be to mix up all these
and then putting them in a machine called an different recycled materials and melting or
extruder (Films Media Group 4:16-4:24). combining them into one component.

all recycled products go through a series of Important info

destructive tests to find out about their
strength and performance (Films Media
Group 5:06-5:11).

Other piece of regulation thats relevant is This is a very obvious and very smart
ROHS, which stands for Restriction of restriction that not only recycled materials
Hazardous Substances, and thats really should have to go through, but any material
important for us because ROHS means that that people interact with everyday.
you cant put lots of nasty chemicals and
compounds into a piece of plastic which
might then leach into the soil after its been
disposed of, or worse still, create gases or
other kinds of materials in use that could
harm the health of the people that are using
the product or engaging with it (Films Media
Group 6:36-7:04).

lots of plastics also have chemicals added Even though this is chemicals being added
during initial manufacture. These include they are not harmful to us and do not impact
bromine to make materials more flame the environment.
retardant, chemical plasticizers to make them
more flexible; and and pigments that make
them less likely to fade in the sunlight.
 Fahrenholz 3

Because of these chemical additives, every

batch of recycled plastic has to be tested to
find out exactly whats in it (Films Media
Group 7:33-7:59).

It was incredibly exciting to be using important

something that was single source recyclate, so
you could tell exactly where it came from,
you could tell a story about the chair (Films
Media Group 8:56-9:04).

Using lots of identical ribs to make the chair Something that costs less also helps the
rather than a single piece of material meant environment.
much smaller tools were needed to make the
pieces keeping costs down. This concept also
made much better use of the properties of the
recycled playstation plastic (Films Media
Group 10:46-10:59).

It can easily be repaired and recycled What we want to be able to do with furniture
(Films Media Group 12:36). that has already been made out of recycled
materials.

If one of these pieces breaks for whatever
reason, then you can just replace that singre
rib. You dont have to replace the other
twelve so its much more efficient. Youre
replacing a part that costs about 8o pence and
youre keeping all of the other plastic, so very
efficient. It means that it can have a very long
life without needing to reprocess the whole
thing (Films Media Group 13:21-13:46).
Where as in regular chairs you would
probably just have to replace the whole thing
if something broke. I would like to be able to
design the chairs and other furniture I make in
this way. To somehow be able to take away
only the broken part and only need to fix that
and leave the rest alone as we possibly could.

So theres the company thats supplying the It is safe to say that there are a lot of moving
original plastic thats going to be repossessed. parts to this process and that it takes a lot of
Theres the compn=any that dies the work. But if you think of it this way, this
shredding and granulating of that plastic. provides a lot of jobs for people.
Then theres the company that dries it,
purifies it and produces a new form of that
plastic as a pellet which goes over to the
company that does injection molding. Which
eventually goes to USAS plastic parts that are
ready to be fitted on a frame. Then theres the
company that makes the frames and the
company that supplies the small caps that go
on the base of the frame. Those frames come
together and again those parts come to us- at
 Fahrenholz 4

least they come to us as units in our stock

control and then the assembly might happen
at any point on those spokes as well to make
it as efficient as possible. And so our role is to
make sure all those parts work together in a
really efficient way (Films Media Group
14:29-15:20).

By finding single source plastic, testing to The thought process of creating this chair
establish its properties, factoring them into the from recycled materials.
design, and thinking about ease of repair and
end of life (Films Media Group 15:42-
15:49).

Working out how to separate the plastics Important info

from the metals and other harmful materials
in the fridges without releasing and of the
harmful gases they contain (Films Media
Group 17:09-17:18).

Used to go to landfill, but thanks to the new Everything can and should be recycled in
technologies theyre now being used as high some way or form.
temperature fuel for making cement, saving a
fortune on costs and reducing (Films Media
Group 19:02-19:10).

Hundreds of chips from each batch of waste Many tests have to be done in order to find
plastic are tested using an infrared out what the materials are and if they can go
spectrometer (Films Media Group 21:02- together. *Take note of the machine.
21:05).

Plastics are often blended, creating important

thousands of variations (Films Media Group
21:49-21:51).

The plastic is then ground down to reduce Important info

the size of the graduales (Films Media
Group 22:21-22:24).

An injection molding machine, one of the *Important note on the shaping of the
main ways of shaping plastic products. Inside different components.
the machine, hot molten plastic is injected
into a molding tool. Its quickly cooled, and
when the two halves of the mold pull apart,
its pushed out and the machine closes up
again, ready for the next part (Films Media
Group 23:54-24:14).
 Fahrenholz 5

Because it takes less energy to create them, important

the new parts have a lower carbon footprint.
They also fit better and theyre cheaper
(Films Media Group 26:08-26:15).

Plastics recycling is still in its infancy, but
with the new technologies coming on line and
increasing consumer demand, it looks set to
continue to grow. And by using more
recycled plastics, everyone benefits because it
means we all have a much lower carbon
footprint (Films Media Group 26:29-26:46).
Recycling household products is still
something that is new but is on the rise. And
because of this the whole world will hopefully
benefit greatly from it. Hence the reason I am
very into this topic.

Summary:

My second source is a video called Designing with Recycled Materials. It is a twenty-seven

minute video that is very educational on the process of recycling the materials and turning them

into a product. They go through the brief explanation of all the companies it takes to put one

product together and all the moving parts to make one product. When creating the chair, they

were able to make it out of all separate parts so if something breaks, they only have to replace the

one part instead of the whole thing. They go in depth about figuring out all the different plastics

and metals are in the recycled materials and how they sort through them. Testing the plastics

after they have been melted together for strength and adding certain harmless chemicals to the

materials are also part of the process. And the best part is since everything is cheaper and all the

waste is reduced due to recycling almost everything, like they say, the carbon footprint is much

lower.