Problem Identification.

3. PROBLEM ANALYSIS & IDENTIFICATION

3.1 Analysis of Social Context and Resulting Design Criteria
3.2 Analysis of Challenge and Resulting Design Criteria
3.3 Summary of Design Criteria

2.1 Analysis of Social Context and Resulting Design

Criteria
The goal of the waste for life project was to develop a design of a
foldable chair that could be used by the co-operatives in Buenos
Aires to ultimately increase their standard of living. These cooperatives represent members of the Buenos Aires population that
have teamed together and earn a living by processing waste
materials available to them into products that are desirable and can
be sold. The role of the chair is simple. It will be used in every day
lifestyle to sit on or help aid in other tasks and can be dismantled
easily to be able to store it in the minimal space provided. The
Chair is made up of Plastic, which is reused. Such as plastic bags
and plastic caps which are both layered together in anpiece of
machinery called a hot press, which processes the waste materials
into a composite material through a high temperature and pressure
environment. This composite material created has properties, which
are more desirable and can be manufactured into products that can
be sold. Due to the limitation in accessible resources and skills there
are a number of restrictions on the design of the chair. As
mentioned earlier, it has to be able to be constructed with materials
readily available to the co-operatives and has to be able to be
assembled by the members of the co-operatives. From this the chair
apparatus must be simple to construct. 7.3 Social Context Analysis
In order to design a chair that will be of most use to the cartoneros,
their social context must be thoroughly researched and understood.
The most relevant areas to consider are the cartoneros safety, skills,
resources, and financial context. In addition, ethics as described by
Engineers Australias Code of Ethics must be considered and
incorporated in the all tasks. Analysing these areas is fundamental
to establishing a suitable design criterion. . A stakeholder analysis
was completed by Team D to correctly identify who would be
affected by the project and what these effects would be. The main
groups of the community affected by this project include: The
Government, CEAMSE , the green peace and the MTE. As this would
help control the zero waste law by the green peace, by giving an
opportunity to decrease the number of cartoneros in the landfills
looking for waste. This would decrease the waste and help the
country environmentally and economically.

CEAMSE and the government would have a decrease in profit as

they hire cartoneros organisations to sort the waste, if this no
longer exist they would have to hire private organisations and this
would cost them much more because the cartoneros are under
payed anyway.
The Product will help give cartoneros to be more financially
independent and would affect their lifestyle greatly in positive
manner. As less cartoneros would work in landfills, the Zero
Garbage Law would start working and Green peace would in come in
domination. This would affect CEAMSE and the local government
greatly, as they operate the landfills and control the cartoneros
majorly. This would give other stakeholders a chance to emerge and
benefit the country in different areas and minimise government
corruption.
To minimize unexpected consequence or social impacts to the
community of Buenos Aires, the team identified some of the most
common social impact problems that a project can have on a
community. Three of the most expected of these include social
domination, exploitation and hierarchy evolution. (7.4.1
Domination). Domination refers directly to CEAMSE controlling the
private sector in Argentina and handling the distribution of business
to locals. This is a direct issue in which members of the community
socially dominate other members.
Cooperative cartoneros working with Waste for Life should have the
right to a safe working environment and hence their context with
regards to safety training must be analysed. Many cartoneros were
previously employed in a variety of occupational areas before
Argentinas economic collapse, which means that many may be
unfamiliar with standard workplace safety practices. (Buenos Aires
Design Brief 2014) Cartoneros may be exposed to hazards with the
introduction of a hot press and should be properly trained to use it
safely to avoid injury. In addition, the design should incorporate as
many safety aspects as practical to reduce risk. Integrating safety in
a design is an ethical responsibility of engineers. Since some
cartoneros are inexperienced in manual labour, ease of operation is
also an important aspect.
Income earned through the cooperation with Waste for Life is
minimal. The majority of this income is spent on necessities and
there is unlikely to be much money remaining for buying equipment
to help with their job. This is an important part of the cartoneros
social context and has numerous design implications associated
with it. Any maintenance or replacement of broken parts should be
inexpensive to buy and the overall cost making a chair and using

the hot press should be minimised. Availability of replacement parts

is less of an issue since, due to globalisation, components such as
bolts and bearings of the hot press are standardised around the
world and readily available at relevant retailers.
Directly related to their financial context is their lack of building
materials, having only access to disposed objects that are obtained
through the recycling of trash. The range of materials available is
large but may be unreliable or hard to find. Ideally, as many
components of the design should be replaceable or substitutable by
recyclable materials
Furthermore, the use of electricity is undesired since the cost would
be taken directly out of the income of the cartoneros. A large
amount of electricity is necessary to operate the hotpress and any
unnecessary use of electricity should be avoided and alternatives
considered. Designing a shredder that does not operate on
electricity is a realistic constraint and will increase the profit earned
as well as removing some electrical hazards.
The Code of Ethics by Engineers Australia states that an engineer
must practise engineering to foster the health, safety and
wellbeing of the community and the environment, more
specifically, incorporate social, cultural, health, safety,
environmental and economic considerations into the engineering
task. (Engineers Australia 2010) Further ethical criterion can be
formulated with regards to the code, such as avoiding any use of
unsafe or toxic materials such as asbestos. Any material used in the
construction of the chair must be safe in the environment that it will
be used in. Any negative economic, social and environmental
consequences to stakeholders must be considered and minimized
with regards to sustainability. Sustainability of our design is
important since it must be designed to last long when considering
the projects life cycle, especially when considering the context of
the benefactors.

2.2 Analysis of Challenge and Resulting Design Criteria

The aim of this challenge, as specified by the design brief, is to
design A ecofriendly, easy to use, carteros friendly chair. A chair
that can be dismantled any time and folded into smaller pieces and
kept away using minimal area. A product that is strong enough to
handle the weight of a average human being and to help the locals
of Argentina with their every day lifestyle. This product can help the
cartoneros increases there quality of lifestyle by using the chair for
themselves or selling the chair and making a profit economically. An

important quality of any building material is consistency across the

material, as well as consistency across samples. This is necessary
since a material is only as strong as its weakest point, and having a
sample that ranges widely in strength must be compensated with a
higher safety factor and hence wastes material.
The ideal plastic composite used for building would consist of
moderately sized rectangle pieces of fibre reinforced plastics
compressed together with a hot-press, such as the Kingston Hotpress available to the cartoneros working with Waste for Life.
Properties such as high strength and modulus are important in a
material used for building and structural purposes. These properties
are achieved through aligning the fibres at different orientations to
produce a dense and uniform slab.
If the plastic sheets are too small, or theyre pressed with the plastic
caps unequally there will be minimal overlapping of the fibres which
would lead to the slab being susceptible to tensile stresses and
would result in failure. Using shredded pieces that are way too big
will produce a composite that is not uniform resulting in highly
inconsistent properties among samples and hence not useful from a
structural viewpoint. A slab needs to be exactly in dimensions with
equal amounts of thickness throughout all the slabs, as we dont
want any slabs to be weak, as this would result in our chair to be
unstable or perhaps unable to withstand the optimum weight.
The primary plastic composites that are to be used will be made
from alternating layers of plastic, paper and plastic caps and then
processed in the hot-press. The composites usually have a thickness
of up to 1/8 inch and have flexural strengths of up to 70MPA. In
general, the higher the fibre content the higher the strength and
modulus being more ideal for a structural material. This prompts the
requirement that the manually operated shredder will be capable of
shredding composites with these properties.

2.3 Summary of Design Criteria

As specified by the design brief:
1. Manually operated
2. Able to handle average weight of people of Argentina
3. Needs to be stable and uniform
Criteria evident from analysis of context and challenge:
4. Safe to operate for experienced and inexperienced cartoneros
5. Able to be constructed and maintained with the available equipment and skills
6. Easy to access all components for maintenance and restoration

7. Able to be maintained and replaced with:

Recyclable materials easily obtained in Buenos Aires,

And/or Inexpensive and easily obtainable components from retailers

8. Easy to operate
9. Assists the cartoneros financially and to improve daily lifestyle
10. Abides by the Code of Ethics, specifically:

Any material used must be safe in the environment which it will be

used in,

Any negative economic, social and environmental consequences to

stakeholders must be considered and minimized to promote sustainable
development