From Industrial Waste to Product Design

Paper in proceeding, 2012

To use waste as a starting point for new product development would be a sustainable use of material resources that alleviates waste handling loads. So far, products that use waste as a starting point have not been able to significantly affect waste trends. This shows a need for methods that facilitate using waste materials for product development. With this in mind, the project “From Industrial Waste to Product Design” was initiated. Industrial design engineering students are encouraged to do their master theses on exploring product development with currently unused waste. This article suggests a methodology to help designers achieve this. Two approaches were undertaken: a product study to review the state of the art in designing with waste; and an analysis of traditional design processes. In the end, an expanded design process was proposed, since a description of a systematic process for this issue was lacking among researchers or practitioners.