Think-Make-Use

Long description

“Think-Make-Use” is an explorations of consumer products design that can be directly reused for building construction without significant energy consumption. It demonstrates multidisciplinary design approach that includes adaptive reuse consideration at the beginning stage of product design. This research aims to re-evaluate current “make-use-recycle” mantra of sustainable movement.

Since 1970’s environment movement, recycling has been revived as a mainstream idea for sustainable environment. Unfortunately, statistic published by Verisk Maplecroft shown that only 16% of world waste is recycled while 46% of waste is disposed with unsustainable methods. With two billion tons of annual waste added worldwide, design community need to re-evaluate current “make-use-recycle” mentality. Though recycle reduces energy consumption, recycling process inevitably requires energy for transporting, sorting and reproducing of recycled materials into new products. While recycling material such as aluminum yields higher reduction in energy consumption, materials like plastic and glass still requires a significant amount of energy to recycle into new product.

“Think-Make-Use” will start by focusing on redesigning plastic containers for the reuse as building materials for housing. Globally, recycling of plastic is failing. Out of 350 million metric tons of plastic waste generated each year, only 14% to 18 % is recycled while 70% goes to landfill. This is because only 2 out of 7 types of plastic can be recycled. In addition, recycled plastic is both expansive and lower grade compare to virgin plastic. Thus, thinking about the adaptive reused character of plastic container design is crucial to avoid costly recycling process.

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