What is the 'Extended Product Responsibility' concept?
That concept is when you're designing a product, you need to design in the front end of the system a responsibility of how it's able to break down and then recycle back out into industry. An example is. This concept would be best applicable to the plastic industry. They're making plastics that are so sophisticated that when used one time, it's impossible to reuse them. They're fortified. It's like there's two different groups of plastic. There's plastic that you can keep reusing and reusing; and yes, it derogates. And there is another plastic that is an epoxy, a resin base. Use one time, you can not alter the carbon chain of that molecular structure. You're stuck. Burning it is even worse than tossing it. So the question is, when they're designing that, if they can, why not design with this responsibility recycling ethos to design the product so when it gets to the landfill, we can recycle as much as possible. Make it cradle to cradle. Or zero waste. Or closing the loop of the product. And I think if product designers were to integrate this philosophy or concept into their products, we would in addition to having more recycling, we would be able to get it in the landfills, extract, process and put it back into another product. And in a shorter time frame. And that's why if you look at aluminium cans, the industry has agreed upon a coating, a graph coating. That comes off very easily in a recycling process. Same thing with litres of Pepsi and Cola. Take a look at how that becoming uniform, because there is a way if we can all agree in graphically representing our aluminium can, so that when it gets to the landfill we can clean it, process it, and close the loop of that item with zero waste by reducing the environmental impact it makes sense. So take a look at the aluminium can industry. They've been a brainchild of closing that. And it's fantastic that you can drink a can of pop and have it into another product within six weeks.
