Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Contents
PART I INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 2
1.1 Introduction to Global Challenges in Engineering........................................................................ 2
1.2 Developing Engineering Graduate Attributes ............................................................................... 2
1.3 Guide to using your Design Brief ................................................................................................. 3
PART II BUENOS AIRES: THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT. ................................................... 3
2.1 Argentina at a glance .................................................................................................................... 3
2.2. Argentinean society ..................................................................................................................... 3
2.3 The Argentinean Economy ........................................................................................................... 4
PART III WASTE CHALLENGES IN BUENOS AIRES ..................................................................... 6
3.1 Waste collection in Buenos Aires ................................................................................................. 6
3.2 Waste Collectors in Buenos Aires ................................................................................................ 7
PART IV DESIGN AREA ...................................................................................................................... 8
4.1 Introduction to Waste For Life...................................................................................................... 8
4.2 Previous projects completed by students at UWA ........................................................................ 9
4.3 Projects available to UWA students in 2013 .............................................................................. 10
4.4 Submission Requirements .......................................................................................................... 12
PART V REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 12
PART VI USEFUL RESOURCES ....................................................................................................... 13
5.1 Websites ...................................................................................................................................... 13
5.2 Articles and other sources on the web ........................................................................................ 13
More than ever, the world needs creative engineering solutions to face its biggest
challenges, from poverty to climate change.
UNESCOs first Global Report on Engineering, 2010
PART I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction to Global Challenges in Engineering
The Global Challenge Design Program constitutes a foundation unit for students enrolled in
the Engineering Science major; it is also a broadening unit for students enrolled in the
undergraduate Arts, Science, Design and Commerce degrees. The unit will provide all
students with the opportunity to learn about design, teamwork and communication through
real challenges in a variety of settings: the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina; the province of
Lautem in Timor Leste; and the Shire of Roebourne in Western Australia. The unit will also
enable students to think critically about a range of issues - such as development,
globalisation, cultural diversity, ethics and justice and how these shape the way we devise
equitable and sustainable solutions to the global challenges of the 21st century.
Waste management is a crucial challenge facing nations and communities across the globe.
Waste management is a worldwide problem in poor and rich cities alike.
Managing waste in a socially and environmentally acceptable manner is one of
the key challenges of the 21st century. We are well aware of the growing waste
problem that is literally choking the world we live in today. While the growing
waste problem is a popular subject in the media, which regularly reports on
garbage crises, environmental pollution and landfills, many people do not
think about waste after disposing of it from their homes. Thus, individuals have
very little awareness of where their waste ends up (Jayasinghe et. al. 2013).
You will be looking at ways to assist the waste collectors in Buenos Aires in converting
waste to an income stream. Teams of approximately five students will collaborate on
engineering and design projects that address problems described in this Design Brief.
The course is designed to develop engineering graduate attributes specified by the national
accrediting body Engineers Australia, specifically:
The course also contributes towards the development of other important graduate attributes
related to problem solving skills, the application of basic science and engineering
fundamentals and communication.
a blend of ethnicities with the majority identifying as European Argentinean (mainly Spanish
or Italian) and only a minority as Native American, black or mixed (mestizo).
The photographer took this on a visit to Buenos Aires in 2002 shortly after the crisis at the
end of 2001 when they defaulted on their debt, devalued their currency, and went through
five presidents in two weeks. These posters were put up outside the local headquarters of
Banco de Boston by angry protestors whose funds had been frozen.
http://www.buenosairesphotographer.com/2008/09/crisis-in-20012002.html
The proportion of households below the poverty line increased from 16% in 1993 to 41.4% in
2002, and the proportion of those who could not even afford basic sustenance (critically poor)
increased from 3% in 1993 to 18% in 2002 (Novick et al. 2007 cited in Shcamber, 2010,
p. 6). These figures have improved since 2002 but poverty is unequally distributed within
Argentina in the second half of 2006, 19.2% of the households were below the poverty line
with 16.3% below the line of indigence or extreme poverty. But while the city of Buenos
Aires had 6.4% and 2.1% of its population living in poverty and extreme poverty
respectively, municipalities within the RMBA had on average 22.9% living in poverty and
9.7% in extreme poverty, with the highest extremes in municipalities on the
periphery.(Hardoy & Almansi 2011, 14). Most cartoneros live in these peripheral areas.
Waste has always been considered a tradeable commodity in Buenos Aires, as it is in many
other cities. At the end of the nineteenth century bones were especially valuable because
they were used to manufacture different goods after a steam cooking process and used to
manufacture candles and soap in factories in the CABA at that time. Broken glass was
classified into colours green, blue and white and later sold to glass factories (Schamber,
2010, p. 6).
3.1.2 Management of Waste
There has traditionally been no separation at the source in the waste collection system as
there is in urban areas in North America, Europe or Australia. Residents dispose of their
unsorted, miscellaneous recyclables mixed in with organic garbage in bags, which they leave
on the street for collection (Baillie et. al., 2010). In the city of Buenos Aires, these bags are
collected by one of six trucking companies (5 private, 1 public) each assigned to separate
city districts - and delivered to a landfill (Baillie & Feinblatt, 2010b). The single governmentowned company hauls waste from a transit point in Buenos Aires (BsAs) poorest district in
the southwest of the city.
The landfill is operated by CEAMSE (Coordinacin Ecolgica Area Metropolitana Sociedad
del Estado), which is a joint venture of the government of the Province of Buenos Aires and
the government of the City of Buenos Aires. It has been managing urban waste in the Greater
Buenos Aires region for almost 30 years (WFL 2007) and is the biggest player in the BsAs
garbage business. It runs the landfill (named Norte III) that receives all the waste produced by
all the 13,000,000 people living in Greater Buenos Aires. (CEAMSE).
BsAs does not yet have a visible and/or official systematic recycling program. The municipal
government has partnered with the private trucking companies to build six sorting centres, or
Green Points scattered around the city, two of which are currently up and running. These
Green Points were to be paid for by the trucking companies and managed by a local
cartonero cooperative. The waste from some business and large apartment complexes were
targeted to go to the Green Points where it would be sorted, separated, and sold by the
cartoneros. This was supposed to solve the 'cartonero' problem, but the plans have been
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Most of the information in this section comes from Baillie, et. al., 2010, and Baillie & Feinblatt 2011
hampered by corruption and, if successful, would only manage to formalize the work of
several hundred cartoneros at most.
CEAMSE have also set up a series of social factories on the premises of their one remaining
landfill and in the neighbouring slum area. These are run by cartonero organizations which
receive some of the truckloads of waste before it goes to the landfill. These social factories
separate the recyclables (which they can sell for their own benefit) and the remaining waste
goes back to CEAMSE. CEAMSE has also given over space at the same landfill to private
factories which also receive waste for recycling.
3.1.3 Government waste targets
Government has official targets established by a series of laws and decrees since 2005. Zero
Garbage (Basura Cero) went into effect in late 2005 as part of a comprehensive law dealing
with urban waste, It stipulates that the total amount of garbage in landfills is to be reduced by
50 percent by 2012 and 75 percent by 2017 from 2004 levels, and one of its ancillary benefits
is that recyclable materials will no longer end up in landfills.
Greenpeace was instrumental in writing this law and lobbying for its passage, and it has
actively participated in an advisory committee commissioned by the government to
investigate ways of implementing the Zero Waste strategy. However, six years after the law's
passage, the government has been unable and/or unwilling to develop a systematic waste
management program that can meet its targets. Greenpeace is looking for the government (as
per the law) to assume full responsibility for implementing Zero Garbage, and sometimes
finds itself at odds with certain cartonero cooperatives that enter into piecemeal deals with
government, who in their mind circumvent the intention of the law by allowing the
government to sidestep it's centralized responsibility.
Lack of enforcement, lack of will, lack of strategy, and clashing vested interests have stymied
implementation of an overall strategy to meet these waste reduction targets.
The absence of any coordinated or enforced recycling policy and critically high
unemployment rates combined to incubate a population of informal garbage scavengers,
(cartoneros) who roam the streets of Buenos Aires, picking through the trash for recyclables
to sell. A correlation exists between the number of cartoneros on the streets, the high
unemployment rates, and the prices of raw materials. They are a barometer of Argentinas
well being. It is almost impossible to imagine the Buenos Aires metropolitan urban network
without the presence of the cartoneros, but 10 years ago they were invisible; those who
planned public policies on garbage management ignored them. Nevertheless, at the beginning
of the twenty-first century they began to be regarded as one of the most important
expressions of social exclusion and unemployment as the country fell into one of the deepest
crisis of its history (Schamber 2010). In 2003 anthropologist Franciso Suarez estimated that
there were between thirty and forty thousand cartoneros working in the greater metropolitan
area of BsAs (CNN 2003).
3.2.2 How do they work?
They arrive in (in the city) in late afternoon, each armed with a trolley framing a huge,
woven plastic bag. Their numbers are unknown, but estimates range from 8,000 to 40,000.
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They get to work quickly, opening the garbage bags put out by homeowners and
shopkeepers and fishing out cardboard, plastic bottles, clothing, paper, metalanything
that can be reused or recycled. Adults and children work together all night, rushing up and
down the streets until their bags are bulging with recyclables. Then, they ride a strippeddown train, the Tren Blanco, or walk dozens of blocks back to their homes in the
shantytowns and poor neighbourhoods. They are the cartoneros. (Verge 2010).
WFL has to date worked only with plastic and fibrous waste to manufacture composite
materials. These are reinforced plastic products which have properties superior to the
component waste thereby effectively upcycling. In previous years, UWA students have
assisted WFL by designing products from composites and by improving the machinery
needed to do the reprocessing. This year we are asking students to consider the recycling of
other materials.
WFL would like to know what possibilities exist for the formation of plastic products from
waste plastic components (available in the waste stream of Buenos Aires) that are not
otherwise valuable within an existing market.
In Argentina for example, the cartoneros can sell waste plastic bottles as a source of recycled
material, but they cannot sell the bottle tops. Hence designing a process and thinking of a
product to manufacture from bottle tops would be a useful project (but we would like you to
select your own).
To take on this project it is necessary to research which waste plastic products are easily sold
by waste pickers and which are not. Avoiding products reaching landfill is the primary task
generating income for the cartoneros is also a significant influence on project direction
though. Once you have discovered a plastic product which does not already have a ready
market, you will need to check that it is:
a) recyclable can melt and reform into another product
b) it is not a health hazard to melt the material in a room without a fume hood (to
replicate conditions that the cartoneros work in).
Only then should you try to think of a process and product to reprocess the waste and
experiment with this using the Hotpress or compression mould, in the MILC which is a
duplicate of the press they have available in Buenos Aires, initially designed by WFL.
Try to think about a modular design such as you get in Ikea so it could be made in parts
and put together. Think also of lego and different ways of linking parts which do not need
screws etc.
You will be assessed on your choice of waste product as well as your process and final
product which will need to be carefully documented in your report with photographs and any
experimental data, as well as a prototype product to show during your presentation.
4.3.2 Plastics Recycling equipment
i) Postforming
The hotpress provided in the MILC labs is a prototype of the Kingston hotpress designed by
Darko Matovic for Waste for Life. It is designed to create composite material products from
waste these are reinforced plastic products. The plastic has to melt and flow through the
fibres and hence a lot of pressure is needed. Such pressure is not required for simple plastic
thermoforming which is what we find the cartoneros are often doing in Buenos Aires. This is
when the plastic softens (once it reaches its glass transition temperature) and behaves like
plasticine. As soon as it is cooled again it can form into a solid shape. Hence the potential is
to postform waste plastic into different shapes like cups and toys etc. The hotpress is limited
here also as it can only make flat plates.
Your challenge therefore is to create a simple alternative to the hotpress for post forming
plastics. You could think about heating with an oven or heat lamps and cold forming
(pressing after heating whilst it is still hot), or hotpressing (heat and pressure at the same
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time) but with much less pressure, and in a way that allows for a different shape of mould.
Think of ways of avoiding having to create expensive moulds you could just create the
lower part of the mould and use rubber to push the plastic into the mould on the upper side.
However, you need to research the constraints that the cartoneros are under with respect to all
design parameters such as : equipment, tools, electricity, cost, storage, ease of use, safety (fire
hazard next to waste plastic and paper), health (no fume cupboards) etc.
ii) Calendering
Another process used to create continuous sheets of plastic or laminated paper (sheets of
plastic and paper) is the calendar. This is like a large rolling pin which heats and presses into
a flat continuous sheet which may be used for cladding on houses or material to be use in
many different crafts and industries. It might be possible for example to create long sheets
which can then be cut up and sold as material to designers be used for making bags and other
consumer products. Waste for life has had quite a few enquiries about the availability of this
basic material. You would need to research how calendars work and reproduce the
functionality but at low cost and ease of manufacture with locally found materials.
For all projects you may prepare a prototype of the product (4.3.1) or the process (4.3.2). If
you are able to, locate recycled materials to build the prototype or a model built of wood or
cardboard which demonstrates the process and makes your presentation of the idea easier
but does not actually reprocess the waste. You can document this in your report and show the
model during your presentation.
All your projects with be assessed first and foremost for their appropriateness to the
environmental, social and economic context of the cartoneros so that they may be useful for
WFL to help implement. Each year WFL are sent the most promising projects and those
which are deemed viable are used to create prototype projects in Buenos Aires. You will be
doing invaluable research which would otherwise need to be funded by WFL. Instead the
funds that they raise can be used to directly implement any good ideas that you develop.
All student projects should demonstrate your skills to the levels noted on your list of learning
outcomes in the course outline document. You should include evidence of all your attempts,
including those that failed and you will be given higher marks if you show that you tried
several different ideas before coming to your final designs.
4.3.3 Contacting WfL
Direct all queries in the first instance to your Information and/or your Practical Tutor.
Do not contact WfL directly. The reasons for this are:
a) we find that many student queries can be answered by more research or by a more
thorough reading of available material, particularly the WfL website (see link in Part
VI below)
b) these are working organizations who will find it time consuming to field enquiries
(particularly if they are of the kind described above) from over 150 students.
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PART V REFERENCES
Baillie C., Feinblatt E., Thamae T., & Berrington, E. (2010). Needs and Feasibility. A Guide
for Engineers in community Projects: The Case of Waste For Life. San Rafael:
Morgan & Claypool.
Baillie, C. & Feinblatt, E. (forthcoming). Whose project is it anyway? The case of Waste for
Life, Argentina. In T. Stewart & N. Webster (ED.), Exploring Cultural Dynamics and
Tensions within Service Learning.
Bijslama, B. & Hordyk, M. (n.d.). Open Streets but Closed Minds: Differentiated Exclusion
of Buenos Aires Cartoneros. Retrieved from: http://www.naerus.net/web/sat/workshops/2009/Rotterdam/pdf/Bijlsma_Hordijk.pdf
CEAMSE. Retrieved from
http://www.estrucplan.com/ar/Secciones/Organismos/ceamse/CEAMSE.asp
Chronopolous, T. (2006). Neoliberal reform and urban space: the Cartoneros of Buenos Aires
2001-2005. City, 10(2): 167-182. Also available from
http://themis.slass.org/images/cartoneros/chronopoulos-cartoneros-article.pdf
CNN. (2003). Accommodating an Army of Garbage Pickers, March 26. Retrieved on
January 26 2011 from
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/03/26/argentina.train.reut/
Eppelin, C. (2007). New Media, Cardboard, and Community in Contemporary Buenos Aires.
Hispanic Review, 75(4): 385-398.
Gasparini, L., (2004). Poverty and Inequality in Argentina: Methodological Issues and a
Literature Review. Retrieved on 22 July 2011from
http://www.depeco.econo.unlp.edu.ar/cedlas/monitoreo/pdfs/review_argentina.pdf
Hardoy, J. & Almansi, F. (2011). Assessing the Scale and Nature of Urban Poverty in Buenos
Aires. International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED), Human
Settlements Working Paper Series. London: IIED. Retrieved from:
http://pubs.iied.org/10591IIED.html
Jensen, D. & McBay, A. (2009). What We Leave Behind. New York: Seven Storied Press.
Lewis, D. K. (2003). The History of Argentina. Palgrave Macmillan: New York.
Novick, P. (1998). The management of urban services in the city of Buenos Aires,
Environment & Urbanization, 10(2), 209-222.
Nataraj, G. & Sahoo, P. (2003). Argentinas Crisis: Causes and Consequences. Economic &
Political Weekly, 38(17), 1641-1644.
Schamber, P. (2010). A historical and structural approach to the cartonero phenomenon in
Buenos Aires: continuity and new opportunities in waste management and the
recycling industry. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 2(1-2),
6-23.
Verge. (2010). The Other Nightlife in Buenos Aires: The Story of Argentina's Cartoneros.
Whitson, R. (2011). Negotiating Place and Value: Geographies of Waste and Scavenging in
Buenos Aires. Antipode, 43(4): 14041433.
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