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Saturday, July 21, 2012

Video Reflection: Giving Packaging a New Life

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Watching these videos about recycling, the one thing I’m most surprised about is the effort put into these innovations used for recycling. I didn’t even know that some of the technology used exists! The thing that intrigues me most is the use Optical Sorting System that’s able to identify which kind of plastics the packaging is manufactured from and sort it appropriately which uses infra-red technology. I always thought recycling would be a really long manual process, that machines involvement is required only after the trash is sorted manually by government-paid workers. 

It is certainly refreshing to know society and industries are becoming to adapt a more-environmentally approach nowadays than they did years ago. We, as industrial designers have also the responsibility to incorporate more of this approach in designing products. This includes having to think of ways that products can be recycled after they reach the end of their lifecycle. Like what’s said during last lecture, consumerism is a big problem – which people are buying more and more products, triggering companies to make more products to sell. With the fast-advancement of technology these days, old or outdated products are left, creating wastage. We, as designers are to blame if the materials in some of this wastage take more time or energy to recycle.

Although designers are partly to blame, society should also be more educated by the governments, maybe with the help of media and technology of the need of them to be more “green”.  Like in Germany, other countries – with government and media aids, should raise awareness of ecological impacts to encourage more recycling. Campaigns encouraging the acts of recycling and the buildings of more recycling factories should be implemented. I believe if this can happen, carbon emissions will be reduced and fewer trees will need to be cut down – making us closer to reaching our goals.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Video Reflection: How It's Made - Packaging


These videos of how packagings are made really opened my eyes to a whole new world. I knew that packagings are produced in factories at an ultraspeed, but what I didn't know was how complex the process really is.

For the first video, about Corrogated Cardboard; I always thought they were the easiest to make- when in reality they require no less than 4 stages, which include pressing with rollers, applying glue with water and starch and the printing process which requires several different rollers applying different colorings to each part of the cardboard. The one that surprised me most being the printing, since I always thought the printing would be done all at once per paper instead of being divided into several different stages.

The process of how packaging tubes are made, although interesting, doesn't really excite me as much as the others since I've watched a similar video before.

 On how to make Tetra Pak Containers, from the video I found out that there are 3 layers on each container, with them being plastic layer, paperboard and a foil- with the plastic layer making it leak-proof. One thing that concerns me was the manual quality control after printing, which shows the worker being exposed to a constant on/off light without him wearing any eye protection.

The makings of Glass and Plastic Bottles & Jars excite me as well, as who knew that for both, the inital form would just be a blob, for both but then as for plastic it's stretched and made into a bigger form, and with glass with it being molded.

As for all of them (including making of Aluminium Cans), it amazes me that there is actually a Cleaning process done near the finish- as I never thought there was 1 in the first place.

Overall, these videos really helped me learned as an industrial designer, the technical process of how packagings are formed. It also gave me an insight of just how much machine and manual labor plays a part in making these packagings.

Click here to see the videos!