Design of waste plastic recycling facilities based on campus scenarios
Authors: Chen Xun , Jiang Yuxin , Li Xu 
Published: January 2024

According to statistics from the China National Resources Recycling Association, only 31% of the approximately 62 million tons of waste plastic produced in China in 2021 was recycled. The reason is that the composition of domestic waste is complex, and the compatibility between plastics requires waste plastics to be classified before recycling. Relying only on waste pickers and staff at garbage drop-off points for sorting is inefficient and costly. The sorting problem in the recycling process needs to be solved urgently. Establish a more reasonable recycling system to increase the recycling rate of waste plastics and alleviate plastic pollution. First, in the pre-survey desktop research, reports released by authoritative organizations such as the China National Resources Recycling Association were studied, and 12 documents were selected for review based on timeliness and content relevance. From the data published in the documents, it is known that the proportion of waste plastics in campus domestic waste is higher than that of municipal domestic waste. The campus has more ample space and public facilities can be deployed flexibly. Therefore, the waste plastic recycling facilities in the campus scene were determined as the research object. The research will be conducted in two parts based on the impact of internal process factors and external situational factors on recycling and sorting behavior. Internal process factors are first based on stratified random sampling in the probability sampling method to sample different user groups on campus to obtain 20 samples, and record their behavioral processes through implicit observation. To prevent observer bias, standardized open-ended and in-depth interviews were added. Thus, the overall basic functions and the functional list of each behavioral stage required in the plastic recycling classification process are determined and described in the form of abstraction, quantification, and object-object structure. Then the KJ method is used to classify functions, and four types are summarized: physical function, cognitive function, symbolic function and aesthetic function. Research on external situational factors attempts to identify users’ willingness and operability to sort plastic waste in specific scenarios. Through focus groups and semi-structured interviews, we studied whether plastic sorting and recycling behavior habits can be formed and maintained from the perspectives of cognitive attitudes, facility convenience, and the correlation mechanism of short-term incentives and long-term incentives. Finally, several program ideas are proposed based on internal and external factors, and a conceptual program is selected from the perspectives of technology, economy, and implementation conditions. In the process of concretizing the plan, experiments were conducted on various permutations and combinations of each functional module. In the arrangement, there are four independent variables: the number of components, the unit arrangement, the geometric forming method and the size. Use this as a clue to produce the final product design. This study uses the above research to explore possible waste plastic sorting and recycling methods to improve the current low recycling rate of waste plastics. It’s also hoped that this design can provide ideas for other sustainable designs.