Video Reflection: Giving Packaging a New Life and How It's Made: Packaging

The videos are about manufacturing packaging with different materials and various recycling process. I think the videos are useful for increasing our awareness, it made me realized the importance of sustainability. As a young designer we have to be aware with our environment to keep the resources running in for our future generations and to minimalist the effect on our earth. Although in some areas sustainable living has become the new trend in lifestyle choices, not many of us know how the recycling process can create a new product.  According to the Giving Packaging a New Life videos, recycled paper contributes around 60% in making new paper, 80% of the glass material is recycled and recycled steel gives around 40% of the raw material.

From the videos, I learnt that producing and recycling process required a lot of energy and material, with increasing people awareness to this subject is essential.  I believe that when people who don’t know about sustainable living to realize the importance of recycling, we can increase the percentage of re-usage material more than listed above. It has to start from the materials that people frequently use, for example paper and plastic. In many supermarkets (such as Coles and Woolworths), they encourage us as a consumer to use eco friendly bag instead of plastic bag to help reducing plastic waste.

The sorting process of materials got my attention. The process is interesting how the machine is able to sort materials which one will be able to get recycled and vice versa.  This machine is really helpful for recycling process, as sometime people do not care which trash bin their waste should go.

In conclusion, after watching the videos, I learnt new things. I realized that each material has different characteristics that led to different processes of manufacturing and recycling. I’d recommend people to watch the videos so that they can help to contribute for future generations needs.