Eve - Design for Disassembly

My Senior Design Thesis at UIC revolved around our relationship with trash - specifically the waste we produce through our consumption of manufactured products. 

After researching the exponential growth of trash in the United States alongside recycling rates, I explored ways of confronting consumers with the hidden environmental impact of their purchases and encouraging to make buying choices that were better for the environment.

Approaching the problem from a design and manufacturing standpoint, I explored a new approach to the consumer product lifecycle that pairs design with consumer awareness to keep recyclable materials out of landfills and return them to the manufacturing stream when a product's useful life ends.

Eve is the result of an exploration of how a common, ubiquitous household object can be designed to be quickly and easily disassembled into its separate materials for appropriate disposal.

Exploration

In order to understand the environmental impact of throwing away a consumer product, I began collecting, disassembling, and categorizing objects. I discovered that many of the products we have in our homes are made of mostly recyclable materials, but they become trapped in non-recyclable forms that make it difficult to efficiently separate and recover valuable materials.

The Real Problem

The root of the problem is economic: it simply isn't worth the effort of recovering reusable materials from everyday products. Objects that are made of few materials are cheap and easy to recycle. Massive objects that contain enough material to be valuable are worth the investment to disassemble. 

The vast majority of the products we buy, use, and throw away are too complex to recycle easily, but the materials aren't valuable enough to justify recovery.

How do we make it worth it?

Making it Happen

I explored how I could apply these principles of Design for Disassembly by applying them to a ubiquitous household object - the drip coffeemaker.

By all accounts, this machine is pretty standard, but with the removal of just a few screws and a few minutes of time, all of the materials can be separated for disposal - electronics, glass, plastics, metals, etc can be appropriately disposed of.