Waste

For the second day of the course we had programmed a trip to a carpet factory called InterFace FLOR. Since this factory is extremely linked to biomimicry, it was vital for us to receive some basic knowledge on this subject, so our professor Jako Appleman came to our hotel and gave us a short lecture about this issue.

The essence of biomimicry is to understand how nature manages to solve certain problems, and try to apply these principles to solve human technical problems.
For which problems can we find solutions in nature? For example, all those concerning sustainability: the planet provide us a certain natural resources that we are able to use to human benefit, but as world population grows, the way we take advantage of these resources might not be enough. To face this situation we can take a new approach: there is no waste, only food. We must be able to use and reuse as much natural resources as possible. Technology is making this easier and every day we move towards more efficient an ecological ways of producing and consuming energy and primary materials. However, if we look to nature we might find behaviors and processes that can surprise us and give us new options to achieve our goals.

For the first asigment of the afternoon, we had to form a three person group in order to present the issue of waste from the YUPTA framework point of view and visualize our thoughts. To do this we decided to go through a typical day of a four member family and analyse how waste affects their lives.

The main sources of waste are water, paper, leftovers, organic waste, energy, etc. So we drew the rythm of waste production to visualize how waste increases or decreases during the day. Our conclusion was that peaks can always be found at the meal times. During the night there is no production of waste at all.

Another important factor is the location of the house: if it is in a city, the best way of getting rid of the waste is using the city bins, so that the trash will end up in the dump. But if the house is in the country, we came up with some solutions: using organic waste as a fertilizer for the garden, using leftovers of the meals to feed pets, burning paper waste in the fireplace to use the heat to warm water or even warm the room, installing purifying water filters that allow us to reuse the water to do some activities such as washing the car or watering plants.

By these means, we manage to reduce the amount of waste to 40%. The rest cannot be recycled so we can negotiate with our neighbours to have a common container to collect this garbage. Then we can dispose them once a week.

To finish our project we remarked the fact that waste is not an issue people like to talk about or to be around (concernig smell and aesthetics), so it´s usually hidden.

At the conclusion of our presentation we came up with a question: is it possible to make waste interesting to the public? We may answer this question in a few days...

In this step of the designing process we were asked to look back to nature and find in it solutions to some problems we were facing when designing our project.

The first example we found that could help us was fungal enzymes. Plastic laminates, stickers and food packages are difficult to separate from their non-paper components. Given the low value of these components, there has been almost no successful research on the field. Fungal enzymes degrade organic matter into useful nutrients, making easy the separation of the plastic. Now we can reuse and recycle them.

Another interesting fact we used was the purifying properties present in the structure of a cell. Some proteins entitled to transport the water from one cell to another also purify this water. There is already a patent that explains how we can apply this to solve technical problems, so our group found this example very useful.

Lastly, we looked up some books to see if we could find examples of inspiring animal behaviors. Since none of the members of the group had deep biological knowledge, this was a hard task. However we found one example: crows use urban garbage to build nest. This is a clear case of reusing waste.
Now we have a clearer idea of how we can include biomimicry aspects in our design.

How can Waste help other groups in their designs...

Before we go to the design part of our waste project we asked all the other groups to help us with giving ideas. In fact eatch team had to write some demands from the other teams.
That made us learn more things about everyones project, to see what they want their design to achieve, and also to generate many ideas about our design. We had to think how all these groups can be conected to eatch other and how they could help us achieve our goals.
We tried to demand many things so that all the teams will have to expant their points of view. The difficnlt part was after giving the questions, because we had to find some solutions. Our goal was to keep everyone happy, and to help as much as we can. Of cource this is not always possible because some demands don't match to our design. But even then we tried to use our imaginations and find other solutions that will solve, at least part of, the problem.
I think this task was very helpful because we get to learn about the difficulties eatch design confronts, we used our imagination very much and we understood that we all depent to eatch other and in order to succed with our design we have to communicate with all the groups. I believe that the outcome of this week will be very interesting.

After the presentation we decided to make our design more decentralised, to fit in the Smart Grid philosophy.

After our presentation we discussed some ideas with the group. All the observations were really healpfull for us.
One weak part of our original design was that it was not much decantralised because people of the city had only to seperate their trush. That was all the responsibility they had. At first we thought that this will be helpful, because they want have to spent time worring about the waste. Moreover, recycling procedures take lot of time and equipment and that makes it difficult and expensive to have recycling machines in every residence of the city.
Considering the above, we desided to change somethings in our design. Nevertheless, the design is to be used in the year 2050, at about 40 years from now. That means that we have to keep in mind that technology will have expand and that thinks that nowdays consider to be impossible, will be then common knowledge.... According to this fact, we can assume that recycling procedures will become easier and faster and they could even take place in your own house!

Our first approach to solve the city's waste managment problem...

Our first thoughts were focused on the way that trush will be located in each house and furthermore how they will be transfered to the recycle plant. After lot of consideration we end up with two gathering solutions:
The first solution is that trush has to be collected in every building seperately in the first place and then in a container. There will be containers in every neibourhood. What is interesting about this solution is that enery resident will have to seperate its own trush, distinguish recyclable matterials from the non- recyclable. Then, as far as the new buildings are concerned, there will be some kind of verticall tubes conected with all the appartements in the building,who end in the containers. In this way trush will be collected in several containers without causing difficult to the residents.
In the same solution, as far as the old buildings are concerned, we can hire a jenitor. This person will be in charge of collecting the trush from every appartment and then transfer them in the containers. This will happen because in old buildings there may not be enough space to constract tubes to transfer the trush.
Waste collection will take place during the night hours so that city;s traffic won't cause any problems. Also containers will be taken on the streets only after 8pm, when streets are not so crowded.
Our second solution is to replace bins and containers with big underground holes (about 4-5m depth) that can contain trush and keep them hidden and protected from the heat. There will be special vehicles that will be equipped with a construction similar to a vacuum cleaner that can take the trush out of the holes. This holes will also be covered so that the waste will remain protected.
To sum up, we could even combine these two solutions for the best outcome. Our design is still under discussion.

We define the Design Brief.

Our next concern is to define the Design Brief. Our design contains trush so the most important part is to be clean and healty, for the people who are near and the enviroment also. Moreover, we will design a smart grid so the main condition is that it has to be decentralised. Adittionally, our last non-negotiable condition is that our design has to be easy to use for everyone. This concerns especially elder , young and disable people.
Some other parameters that we have to take under concideration are the climate conditions, that in our city is Meditteranian climate.
Finally, a very important part is to biologise our design's functions. We will biologize how nature can reuse waste. The results of this research will be published soon....

The recycling plant of the future

Our project includes this recycling plant that have a procedure based on fungal enzymes to separate organic material from plastic. hen we can recycle that plastic. The plant also separes organic waste in two parts. One of this parts goes to make biogas to produce energy. The other part is used to produced fertilicers.
Another important part of our future plant is the treatment of the water. It consists on pass the dirty water through a filter. This water is no drinkable, so it can be used by the recycling plant.
Then we have a purifying filter based on protein cells to make it drinkable. Some proteins entitled to transport water from one cell to another also purify this water. Its name is Aquaporins.
Of course our plants also recycles glass and metal.

What is paper recycling machine??

This device aids in the process of recycling recovered paper by turning it from waste to a new paper product. In a paper recycling mill, multiple types of machines help complete the recycling process. Each machine has its own role (pick-up, sort, pulp, filter, make paper...) in the recycling process and becomes interconnected by conveyors that transport the paper from one step (machine) to the other.

"it is capable of extracting profit of something that normally nobody wants."

Looking for sources of inspiration in the nature this small insect has been called our attention, since it is capable of extracting profit of something that normally nobody wants. Now i am going to give you some information about this curious insect and I hope you enjoy it
Dung beetles are beetles that feed partly or exclusively on feces
Many dung beetles, known as rollers, are noted for rolling dung into spherical balls, which are used as a food source or brooding chambers. Other dung beetles, known as tunnelers, bury the dung wherever they find it. A third group, the dwellers, neither roll nor burrow: they simply live in manure. They are often attracted by the dung burrowing owls collect.

This is how our group wants to solve city waste using the concepts of presence design and smart grid.

On the last stage of our process design, we presented a system to take care of the city waste. To do this we have designed a network that is intelligent and decentralized. Houses, schools, public buildings, stores and so on are spots where waste is produced. We treat each spot as an independent node inside our network and the idea is that each node individually should be able to recycle as much as possible. The trash that cannot be recycled inside a house is taken to the recycling plant. The transport team is in charge of taking our garbage to this plant.

The solution for the street garbage is based on presence design: sweepers are in charge of keeping the streets and playground safe, and they offer a sense of security to the kids playing there.

As for factories, there should be some regulation enforced by law to recycle and reuse as much as possible. For example, the carpet factory we visited on Tuesday gave to charity deficient samples of carpets, and invested money and energy in finding was for reusing their own materials.

This is the device our group has designed for getting rid of domestic garbage.

One of the main innovations our system includes is the way we take care of the garbage produced in each house. Since we are talking about a medium sized city, domestic trash represents a big percentage of the city waste. The mechanism must be simple and easy to use by anyone: children, elderly people.

To accomplish this, we have developed a new system based on “smart bins”. Basically, each apartment of a building has one or more smart bins. This device has two functions: first it identifies kinds of garbage. If it is paper, the device is able to recycle it and give it back to the user, and if it is not paper, the bin classifies it and sends it down through some tubes to the common containers of the building. We have eight different containers: plastic, metal, glass, electronic devices, batteries, organic waste and other waste. There is another common container in each building. Since each smart bin has to be able to recycle paper, they will need water and some chemical products for the recycling process, so every bin has a little deposit with a sensor. When the bin has not enough liquid, the sensor sends a signal to the common container and gives the liquid to the bin through some pipes.
The recycling process produces some gas, so there also must be a ventilation system.
Finally, our system must be safe, so different sensor through the system monitors and controls each step of the process.

Each building should also be able to reuse water. Water from showers and sinks goes to a water filter and into a deposit. This water is not for drinking, but can be used for cleaning the building, watering plants in a garden and also for the recycling paper process. It is possible that the building produces more dirty water than it can reuse so when the deposit is full and no non-drinkable water is needed, it goes to the recycling plant.

We also must take into account the economic and ecological aspect of our system. Our idea is to implement this system in each building, so it can´t be very expensive. It also has to be clean, so we expect that in the future we can find a system of filters and processes that will ensure that so much paper recycling inside the city won´t create too much pollution.