Taking out the garbage
Last evening, I was taking out the garbage again. It's pretty much been my job since I was a 10-year-old, and even though I've since moved up to the exalted position of patriarch of the Comerford clan, I'm still stuck with it.
What I've noticed is that I seem to be toting more stuff now than ever, yet I'm hauling for a smaller family group�the per capita amount of trash seems to have increased significantly. It got me thinking about finding an engineering solution to the trash-elimination problem�other than a garbage-carrying robot.
If we keep on the present course we'll be buried in disposable and unrecycled recyclable products.
When I think back, I realize that a lot of what came into my parents' house was either meant to stay or was highly reusable. We had the same black, rotary-dial phone from the day I was born until I moved out 21 years later. Milk was delivered to our home every other day in glass bottles, and the empties retrieved by the milkman when he made his next delivery, cleaned, and reused. The same was true for soda bottles; we never had much plastic packaging to contend with as I recall.
Today we have curbside recycling, and so things like plastic bottles, metal cans, and paper that used to end up in landfills are being reprocessed�a definite improvement. And, as Jim Harrison noted last month in this space, thanks to environmental initiatives like the RoHS directive, hazardous materials are being removed from electronics so they do less harm to the environment when they do hit the garbage heap. But for the sake of future generations, I hope it doesn't end there. If we keep on the present course we'll be buried in disposable and unrecycled recyclable products.
It would be nice if we could find a milk-bottle solution for products�an elegant engineering approach that lets us have fresh products without tossing out masses of garbage. Perhaps the answer can be found in product designs that can be enhanced modularly over extended lifetimes. Or maybe it will require development of new materials and design techniques so that devices can pliantly adapt in form as well as function to new applications�a kind of shape-shifter product.
I don't expect what I call Design for Extended Reapplication to be an easy discipline to institute, either from an engineering or consumer perspective. But I'll try to get free of garbage duty once in a while so I can spend some time working on it. Of course, if you have any suggestions or ideas, I'd be happy to hear about them by e-mail.
Richard Comerford
rcomerford@hearst.com
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