CP5065-2021S1-2A07-GROUP3
WEEK 6
Product Life Cycle
Today we learnt about the life cycle of products that have been made and how properly reviewing your product's life cycle can not only serve as a feasibility analysis but also save the earth.
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
To start off, we were taught on what sustainable design is and the importance of it when creating a chemical product which seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment.
The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments through using multiple sustainable design strategies.
OUR PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE
One of our activities that day were on creating a product life cycle for our own chemical product (found in week 2) and break it down to multiple processes:
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Extraction
Production
Packing
Distribution
Use
Disposal
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We initially thought that this was another activity that will help us to analyse our product and help us refine the idea. However, that was not the case that day and we had to take an entire U-Turn
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Our initial idea was on purifying salt water through manipulating pH level that was unsuitable for fish to live in and to also serve as a cleaner by sticking itself with the dirty particles and either increasing or decreasing its density to make cleanup easy.
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This may seem like an ambitious and unrealistic task at first and it is! We only realised this when we simply could not come up with a product life cycle for it and realised that this project was simply out of our abilities.
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Hence we quickly brainstormed and decided to settle with an algae biofuel which utilizes organic product such as sludge, food wastage or algae to generate electricity. There were many resources online that were available and people have shown that it is possible to do so even at your own home! So we could easily craft up a product life cycle that goes many ways.
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We would definitely not be able to overcome this obstruction and a U-Turn of chemical products without the aid of our lecturer Ms Oh so we would like to thank her here for being very supportive and helping us get back on our feet.
C2C (CRADLE TO CRADLE) CONCEPT
The Cradle to Cradle design concept is a method of finding ways of reusing and recycling a certain product which were previously unknown. Being modeled after nature, this principle is set to reduce overall waste generated through mostly biological means such as making your product into compost or other nutrients.
There are several C2C concepts which consist of:
Nutrients become nutrients again
Use of renewable energies
Celebrate diversity
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Our group decided on the concepts of "Nutrients become nutrients again" and "Use of renewable energies"
