Monday, April 14, 2008
Creating a culture of reuse
Reuse is the forgotten R of the three R's.We currently have a materials chain that goes something like this: harvest resource, manufacture, distribute, use, dispose.
Recycling adds an extra step where things are collected during disposal and reintroduced into the manufacturing stage as raw materials. There are two things about recycling that need to be noted:
- Many materials are unsuitable to be recycled into the same thing. Plastics are probably the best example. They are either used to supplement the virgin (new) feedstock, or made into entirely different products (e.g. PET from drinking bottles is recycled into clothes, insulation, credit cards, etc.)
- Recycling often involves breaking down the product into something as close as possible to the original feedstock. This means that all the energy that went into it is lost. Glass is a good example.
The things that I have read about reuse have all been focussed on reusing items in the home and giving or selling them to other people who can use them (which are both important).
I want to see industry take responsibility and start collecting items for reuse, rather than recycling (wherever possible). We have seen this happening our whole lives: glass soda bottles. Every time you took a glass soda bottle back to the store and had your deposit paid back you were putting a bottle into the reuse chain.
The reuse chain works like this: instead of disposing of something it is taken back to the distributor (the store it was bought from). When the manufacturer makes deliveries they also collect the items for reuse. At the factory the items are inspected and cleaned. Any items that are unsuitable for reuse are recycled, and the rest is reused.
This means far less energy is expended on recycling and manufacturing new items which could have been reused. The easiest thing to imagine this working with is glass bottles and jars of any type, but why not expand this to everything? Why not start designing reuse into our products?
There would be huge savings for manufacturers, as they would not need to keep buying new materials. The only costs are the collection and logistics, which are already in place for the distribution of the product.
Packaging is a great example. If packaging can be made durable enough to be reused multiple times then consumers could just keep returning that packaging until it reached the end of its life cycle.
It does require a rethink of how we design, package and distribute things, but the benefits would be great for everyone – both manufacturers and consumers.
1 comment :
If you are leaving a comment with your Name and URL then make sure you put http:// in front of your URL for a correct link. You can use some HTML tags such as <a>, <b> and <i> in your comment. Thanks for your message - I appreciate it :)
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Search This Blog
Subscribe
Tags
About this blog
I'm Duncan Drennan and this blog is about spreading ideas regarding engineering, our environment and creating a better world. You can also follow me on Google Reader.
About Engineer Simplicity
Engineer Simplicity specialises in the design and development of electronic products.
Copyright Notice
Popular Posts
-
We are in the middle of an energy crisis and each of us need to make some dramatic changes to ensure that we have electricity, and that the ...
-
The short version (my "elevator pitch"): Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use about a fifth of the energy of a normal (incandescen...
-
As engineers we spend a lot of time solving problems. A customer has a problem and it needs to be fixed. The electronic boards you have just...
-
This post forms a part of the SA Blook . So what is our reality? South Africa has an unemployment rate of about 23%, a skills shortage crisi...
-
There are a lot of steps to turn an idea into a product. Each step requires care and attention to ensure that the best product is created. B...
-
So here we are, the first blog post...well, really, here I am. My name is Duncan Drennan and this is my blog on business, design, electronic...
-
eWaste is a particularly difficult issue to deal with as it contains many different materials and lots of extremely hazardous substances. I...
-
Electronic design automation tools like OrCAD , PADS and Altium Designer are part of an electronic engineer's day–to–day life. We need...
-
With 48 post over nearly three years, I am certainly not a prolific blog writer. My goal has never been to write a lot, but to rather explor...
-
I think that it is worth trying to understand some of the reasons we are heading towards a food crisis . The result of all of this deregulat...
© The Art of Engineering 2013 . Powered by Bootstrap , Blogger templates and RWD Testing Tool
Every year, 80 million PET bottles are collected from landfill sites to make IsoTherm. One hundred and seventy one 500ml PET bottles go into a 6 kilogram roll of IsoTherm. The polymer from PET bottles has a higher intrinsic viscosity which means it has greater molecular weight. This creates a better rigidity in the fibre with better resilience and loft compared to ordinary textile fibre.
ReplyDeleteSimply put, recycled PET is best!
Read more...http://www.insutherm.co.za/green-product.html