How it’s made
After watching the few videos about how various packaging are being
made, I find the tetra pak and cardboard more interesting as I have less
knowledge about how it’s being made. The use of machining in producing these
packages and the level of details that are needed to be considered in each step
of manufacturing packaging is really quite interesting. The amazing amount of
cardboard boxes that can be manufactured in an hour and the quality of printing
that it can be done. I realized that packaging these days can easily be manufactured
with high quality printing, like the tetra pak for example uses a 6 layer
printing, which allows sharp and accurate colour prints. The use of materials
in packaging now-a-days is mostly recyclable like glass bottles which can be
recycle endlessly. A lot of packaging manufacturers are able to recycle the
materials in order to minimize waste produced, like the aluminium where circles
are stamped out for the can and the cut outs are all being recycled.
Giving packaging a new life
Giving packaging a new life is about how each type of materials are
being recycled. I am quite amazed by how a lot of packaging is being recycled
and how these recycled materials are being reused as a raw material just like
the brand new raw materials. I find it really interesting how plastics now have
a lot of machining which will be able to sense which plastic is which instead
of having to have workers doing it manually. This decreases a huge amount of
time that will be needed to filter and group plastics together. I think
technology now-a-days has helped a lot in helping recycling. The most amazing
part I would say is the Sorting Innovations video which mentioned about this
huge place that has all the machines sorting out the rubbish, grouping
appropriate plastics together and metals in their own group. I think having a
lot of these places will increases the recycle rate around the world. One thing
I also find really interesting is that how materials like plastics can be
recycled in a way that it can be cleaned and reused again just like a new plastic.
Same as the glass bottles how they are being recycled and used the same way
they were being used as its previous life.
I think as an industrial designer now, we have to really consider how we
design products and carefully choose materials that are more eco-friendly.
