Looking at Companies

When researching for our design it is important to look at companies that currently manufacture what we are looking at producing. In our case these are recycling bin manufacturers. It could also be beneficial to look at the designers and manufacturers of the board game, Hasbro.

Hasbro

Hasbro is an American multinational toy and board game company. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world.

Manufacturing

Due to its cheapness, relative safety and ability to effectively mass produce, the vast majority of Hasbro’s products, including the Hungry Hippos board game are primarily made of plastics. The primary method of manufacturing with these plastics is injection moulding.

Injection moulding is a manufacturing process for producing parts from both thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic materials. Material is fed into a heated barrel, mixed, and forced into a mould cavity where it cools and hardens to the configuration of the mould cavity. After a product is designed, usually by an industrial designer or an engineer, moulds are made by a mould maker (or toolmaker) from metal, usually either steel or aluminium, and precision-machined to form the features of the desired part. Injection moulding is widely used for manufacturing a variety of parts, from the smallest component to entire body panels of cars.

Design

When manufacturing with plastics it is also possible to use a wide array of colours with is a crucial design factor of the majority of children’s toys and board games.

Cost

The cost of manufacturing moulds depends on a very large set of factors ranging from number of cavities, size of the parts (and therefore the mould), complexity of the pieces, expected tool longevity, surface finishes and many others. The initial cost is great; however the piece part cost is low, so with greater quantities the overall price decreases.

Recycling Bins

As it a much broader and uniform industry, instead of looking specifically at one company for the manufacturing of recycling bins, we thought it would be more appropriate to look at general trends in the manufacturing and design.

Manufacturing

Like Hasbro’s board games, recycling bins are often made of plastics due to their light weight, strength, and cost effectiveness. This also makes them waterproof and easy to clean. They would also be manufactured using the Injection moulding method (see above).

Design

The majority of recycling bin designs are utilitarian in nature, with a lid on the top and a large area for storing the recycling. The use of different colours and shapes is only usually used to help distinguish between different types of recycling e.g. glass, paper etc.

Note on the Plastics Industry

The biggest threat to the conventional plastics industry is most likely to be environmental concerns, including the release of toxic pollutants, greenhouse gas, litter, biodegradable and non-biodegradable landfill impact as a result of the production and disposal of petroleum and petroleum-based plastics. Of particular concern has been the recent accumulation of enormous quantities of plastic trash in ocean gyres.