Abstract
Industrial Designers develop physical manufactural products intended for production, and the purpose of these products is to satisfy a need or solve a problem. Ironically these products end up creating more problems than the single problem they may have intended to solve, and their end-of-life is not considered in their inception. In order to empower Industrial Design students and equip them with sustainability tools as part of their skillset, annually the student group are tasked with a project where they undertake material experimentation and development as a first step of their product design process. As opposed to utilising readily available materials, they are tasked with creating their own, with a focus on the sustainability of their material and its ability to break down effectively or suit re-use once the product has reached the end of its life. This is then followed by problem identification, where students find evident environmental problems caused most often by decisions regarding material specification. They then undertake a product development process where a final proposed design outcome is prototyped as much as possible from their own developed material. This paper will present a selection of these projects, where the outcomes were able to be presented to the South African Plastics Pact which is a collaborative pre-competitive initiative that brings together key stakeholders from the local plastics value chain. This has allowed for links and partnerships to be created directly between students, and large industry. One of the presented projects has sparked interest with one of the largest retailers across Southern Africa servicing over 850 stores nationwide and will be taken further as an industry-university collaboration. This groundwork has allowed for future projects to align directly with industry from the start, and students can engage with industry key players in developing appropriate solutions.