Take Waste and Make: Guidelines for workshops to find new applications for industrial waste material.
Paper in proceeding, 2013

To find new applications for industrial waste material is environmentally and economically desirable. However, generating such ideas is done under conditions that are normally unusual for product developers: It has a specific input, but a very large solution space. This study explores the workshop format as such and more specifically effective set-ups for workshops aiming at finding new applications for waste material. To explore this, four different workshops were carried out. Given its possibilities to incorporate different expertise, ideas from various fields could be generated, increasing the chance of finding a suitable application area. The participants’ task was to generate new ideas for a re-use of discarded PVC cable sleeving. The workshop format made it possible to evaluate variations in the preconditions. In addition to direct observations in the course of the workshops, outputs from the workshops were analyzed and compared to their preconditions. The workshops resulted in ideas from a broad spectrum of areas, providing a good basis for future product development. It was found that the choice of participants and stimuli were essential for the workshops. This article elaborates upon the connections between the workshop’s set-up and the obtained results.

Product development

Industrial waste

Cross-discipline

Creative workshop

Author

Oskar Rexfelt

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Design and Human Factors

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra)

Jonas Kääpä

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra)

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Design and Human Factors

Leo Li

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Design and Human Factors

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra)

University of Gothenburg

Isabel Ordonez Pizarro

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra)

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Design and Human Factors

University of Gothenburg

Ulrike Rahe

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra)

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Design and Human Factors

Proceedings from the IASDR Conference 2013, Consilience and Innovation in Design, 24-30 August 2013, Tokyo.

4151-4162

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)

Design

Textile, Rubber and Polymeric Materials

Areas of Advance

Production

More information

Latest update

4/15/2025