The PAST Foundation: Engineering and Advanced Materials -Solving Engineering Problems of the Future

The CHALLENGE: We are a disposable society. We throw everything in the garbage. Landfills are reaching maximum capacity yet we continue to generate more waste. In the early 1970's archaeologist Dr. William Rathje examined landfill content to determine what Americans were throwing away and found paper was the most abundant component of modern landfills. Forty years later more plastic than paper is entering landfills. A recent study in California estimated that over 1 billion plastic bottles end up in landfills each year -- that's more than 3 million bottles per day. Managing plastic waste is a global problem. Thus as we are depleting our natural resources and stuffing landfills to capacity we are creating an environmental, ecological, and economic dilemma that can only be solved through engineering.

The SOLUTION: If these plastic bottles were recycled they could be converted into more than 74 million square ft of carpet, 74 million extra large T-shirts, or 16 million sweatshirts just to name a few. These are just a few sustainable solutions to this issue. Through Garbology and materials science engineering students explored the role and recycle potential of polymers in reaching a goal of zero landfill. Using recycled plastic bottles students used a variety of analytical laboratory equipment to identify the different polymers used in each type of bottle specifically, focusing on two forms thermoset plastics and thermoplastics. As students explored sustainable solutions to dealing with the increasing amount of plastics they designed and created an object such as a bench, table or desk from ground plastic chips from plastic they collected at their school.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• PAST Foundation
• Recycling
• Materials Science
• Polymers