VIDEO REFLECTION A

Giving Packaging a New Life & How it's Made: Packaging

“Giving Packaging a new life” and “How it’s made: Packaging” are both interesting and informative as they showed the detailed processes about recycling wastes like packaging as well as how these different types of packaging are made. The high tech and systematic recycling amazed me and enriched my knowledge about manufacturing process. Especially the methods used to sort packaging materials according to their particular properties interested me. For example, the property of being magnetic is utilized to classify tin cans. I also appreciate that the key processes were slowed down to a speed that made each step could be seen clearly, as a result, I was offered an opportunity to watch the details and understand materials more comprehensively. Consequently, it is very important to know the recycling and manufacturing processes of these materials, as it unquestionably could help me to make suitable and reasonable decisions of choosing materials in my future career as an industrial designer.

Moreover, another thing that I realized form these videos is that it is our duty to be knowledgeable and be concerned with how our day-to-day activities and decisions, which can impact the environment. For instance, be more conscious to sort the garbage and prevent it from ending up in a landfill. Additionally, I noticed that waste from cutting shapes of aluminum cans is recycled, and the recycled plastic used to make bottle is the scraps from manufactures. It is a quite environmental idea to pay attention to the details, and reduce and prevent waste and achieve the maximization of resource utilization. This idea may have a crucial affect on my design philosophy, which may encourage me to create multi-functional products or make use of salvaged pieces. What is more, it is known to all that manufacturing industries are one of the contributing factors toward environmental damage, but at the beginning of the video, it said ‘most paper manufactures are also recyclers’. This shows a good start to promote environmental protection industry and encourage all manufacturers to create new ways to use the waste. As a future industrial designer, I should be responsible to help manufacturers to develop towards this direction by making sure the manufacturing processes of my products are environmentally friendly and even the whole life cycle of the products is green.

Overall these videos are useful and undoubtedly will contribute to my future concepts. My three most important “take home messages” are:

•       Designers should know the recycling and manufacturing processes of materials so that suitable and reasonable decisions on material choices could be made and help manufacturers to develop environmentally friendly industry.

•       Pay attention to the details to reduce and prevent waste in order to achieve the maximization of resource utilization.

•       Be knowledgeable and be concerned with how our day-to-day activities and decisions, like sort the garbage correctly to prevent it from ending up in a landfill.