Plasti•Cycle
Personal Project | Fall 2021
Adobe XD, Rhino
Plasticycle aims to relieve the white pollution swept across the globe. Discovering that people lack plastic knowledge and motivation to recycle, I designed a community service system, cooperating with the electricity company and the government. The system incorporates the recycling machine, the operation interface, the coupons, and infographics as positive reinforcements to involve citizens in the recycling process.
White Pollution
Due to the mass production of plastic, more than 8.3 billion tonnes has been produced since the early 1950s. Most of the plastic waste produced in the world is mainly from packaging industry followed by building and construction. Plastic is a non-degradable deadly pollutant to degrade environmental quality and are known to remain in water and soil for years without making any change in their structure.
Even though the production of plastics is huge, the rate of recycling is minimal, only 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled. About 12% has been incinerated, while the rest — 79% — has accumulated in landfills, dumps or the natural environment.
A staggering 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year. How does it get there? A lot of it comes from the world’s rivers, which serve as direct conduits of trash from the world’s cities to the marine environment. These 10 rivers alone carry more than 90% of the plastic waste that ends up in the oceans, and 5 out of ten oceans are from China.
If current trends continue, our oceans could contain more plastic than fish by 2050. The following data shows how long it takes to fully decompose plastics.
Normal Plastic takes up to 1000 years to decompose
Plastic bags take 10-20 years
Plastic bottles take 450 years
Observation
Based on the interviews and the observation, I found out residents are lack of recycling knowlegde and awareness, and they feel uncertain about waste classification. They are especially poor in plastic classification, meanwhile plastic waste is in a huge amount.
Mindmap
Target Group
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Citizens with civic awareness and obey laws and disciplines
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Want to contribute to sustainability
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Attracted by coupons, and consider them as a motivation
Purpose
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To relieve white pollution
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Involve residents into the recycling process
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Cultivate citizens the consciousness to recycle
Solution
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The plastic recycling bin with interactive interface and the app, cooperating with the government and electric power company
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Community service system
Service System
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Collecting the plastic material that is to be recycled.
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Machines sort plastics into different areas
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Remove impurities and everything that is not made from plastic.
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Resizing the plastic waste into small particles.
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Plastic particles are tested to determine their quality and class.
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Use incineration to generate energy, and produce electricity.
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The produced energy then returned back to the community.
Blueprint
Scene Graph
Machine
Scene Wireframe
Final Mockup
Reflection
After the project, I realized the urgency of plastic waste recycling, and how hard to come up with a service system design that attracts users to participate, especially arousing their intrinsic motivation. The final design solution is a combination of multiple platforms, groups of people, and products. It could act as an ideal vision design, but needs so much more research to back it up. The other limitation is my lack of industrial background and knowledge. I have attempted to increase the usable capacity of the machine, however, it is still not an optimal status. If I have more time, I would definitely learn from experts in the industrial field and figure out a better way to utilize the space.