Week 6

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN FOR OUR CHEMICAL PRODUCT🔮

After week 4 on materials for design and week 5 on design for materials, we then go on to week 6, product design considerations (sustainable development) - environmental sustainability. In this week's lesson there are 2 parts to sustainable development.

1. Product life cycle
2. Cradle-to-cradle

1. Product life cycle

Stages:

Stage 1: Extraction

1. Collect unused/unsold food waste from supermarkets, grocery stores, etc.
2. The food wastes are brought to the preparation area before being processed at the factory.
3. Packaging is removed and products are categorised.

Stage 2: Manufacturing & Production

1. Food wastes are cleaned thoroughly with chemicals.
2. Fermentation process includes activating enzymatic properties and biosurfactants of food waste.
3. Organic oils are extracted from food wastes.
4. Fibers and other waste organic residue are filtered and discarded.
5. The acquired oils are mixed with wax and other fragrant factors and molded into desired shapes and sizes.

Stage 3: Packaging

1. Each soap bar is wrapped in recycled biodegradable paper wrappers.
2. Batches of finished soap bar products are packed into cardboard boxes for distribution.

Stage 4: Distribution

1. Finalised products are placed onto cargo containers for mass distribution to retailers by shipping.
2. The products must be kept in cool, dry places to maintain at optimum conditions.

Stage 5: Use 

1. The biodegradable soap will be used for general cleaning in households, hospitals, restaurant kitchens, etc.
2. The soap can also be used for hand sanitary purposes.

Stage 6: Disposal

1. Leftover soap products and packaging can be dumped at landfills to be incinerated.
2. Soap products will turn to litter and eventually biodegrade.
3. Remaining packaging can be recycled or disposed off as no parts of the product are toxic/potential harm to the environment.

2. Cradle-to-cradle

Our team has decided to use these 2 Cradle-to-cradle(C2C) designs: 

1. Nutrients to nutrients again

2. Celebrate diversity 

For our first C2C design, we have concluded that environmentally friendly bar soap made of extracted oil and enzymes found in food waste can be reused for other purposes after cleaning. 

In most cases after using environmentally friendly bar soap for kitchen purposes, washing or even cleaning, the soapy wastewater run off can actually be used as fertilizer for plants as the bar soap was initially made from food waste enzymes and oil extract. The nutrients used in producing the soap bar is converted and turned back into nutrients for crops or garden plants. 

In our second C2C design, we realised that celebrating diversity by establishing a symbiotic relationship with many other industries can be extremely important and beneficial to us. 

We can obtain more of the same kind of food waste from different sources by diversifying our resources for extraction. For example, we can take food waste from the different restaurant outlets, hotels, or even office workplaces, provided that the employees sort out general waste from food waste. This diversification enhances our extraction process and recycle more food waste into environmentally friendly soap.

Modified Product life cycle after C2C

Stage 6: Disposal

1. Soap products can be mixed with water and served as fertilizer/ nutrients for recreational gardening