Project Statement

According to a survey done by United Nations, 15 millions tons per year of plastics is haphazardly dumped into the world's ocean. At the current rate, there could be more plastic by weight than fish by 2050. (David Hutt, 2018) The problem is most severe in countries that line the South China Sea, namely China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, where 75% of the plastics waste drifting in the ocean originates. Much of these floating plastics spend around South China Sea 2 years before drifting out to the ocean. Within these 2 years, the coastal villages are heavily raided by the plastic tides.

The submission intends to revert the situation by empowering the indigenous villages, designing devices and structures to incentivize spontaneous plastic recycle. Through a recent innovation in crafting plastics, the submission proposes that the plastic tides can be mined, shredded, cleaned, dried, baked and cooled in an efficient landscape system.

Project Narrative

PLASTIC RECYCLE

The popular maxim about managing our plastic waste revolves around Recycling. In a broad sense the topic Recycling describe not only on a personal day-to-day level, where we save up the used plastic bottles and dump them into recycling bins, it also entails a series of sophisticated procedures, from collecting, sorting, cleaning, drying, shredding, dyeing, to processing and manufacturing. These processes can be institutionalized and made into a profiting industry.

PLASTIC INDUSTRY

China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam are accountable for 75% of the plastics waste drifting in the world's oceans. Ironically, the same countries that pollute the world's oceans the most are also the most enthusiastic recycler. 60% of the world's plastic waste collected in developed world such as USA, Europe and Japan are shipped to these countries for further recycling. The plastic waste were bought in bulk at a price of around $2.5/kg (2015). It was in the factory owners' interest to buy as the imported waste are well sorted and bundled up in a way that can be brought into factories and henceforth machines directly.

However, the problem lies in such reliance from imported refuse and capitalist-driven industrialized processes.

Firstly, the current recycling paradigm places a significant focus on machineries that can easily cost up to millions of dollar. Investing on these kind of recycling factories are highly capital-intensive. Although they are efficient, the owners usually prefer imported scraps over domestically recovered dirty plastics. They are cleaner, assorted and compressed in bundles. It requires less labour and simpler processes to recycle.

Secondly, there are now ever more supply of plastic waste waiting in line in the ports of Southeast Asia. In Jan 2018, China issued an official ban on importing all the plastic waste from developed countries (mainly from USA, Japan and Germany), in a quest to salvage its own environment crisis because of plastic contamination. China now recycles only 15 percent of the global supply, as compared to 70 percent previously. Without the great Chinese demand to prop up the prices, the spot price of imported plastic waste have dropped from $2.5/kg in 2015 to $0.8/kg in 2018. As a result, it further dissuades waste-pickers from braving the filth to extract plastic that can be sold.

Third, the recycled pallets produced by these workshops are too high-quality, too immaculate and thus too costly to be fitting in a mass low-income market. The strength, finish, and the look of a recycled plastic lumber for instance, is unlikely to be needed for more than a small fraction of uses. In other words, they are a luxury that cannot see any mass application in the context of the locals, so it doesn't bring about as much economic benefits as one may seem.

Therefore these seemingly robust workshops actually work at a great cost of the locals and the environments, since it takes away the initiative to recycle domestically by making the profit so marginal. The Plastic Tide remains a ever more potent problem by the day.

PLASTIC TIDE

Up to 12% of all the produced disposal plastics ends up in the world's ocean (United Nation, 2011). It is suspected that the percentage gets even higher in remote villages and townships where the waste management infrastructure is poor. The tides sweep and disperse these floating plastic debris back to the wide expanses of shallow shores that define Southeast Asia, inflicting environmental disasters such as poisoning corals, and smothering marine animals. In the study site in Kota Kinabalu, a single beach of around 2 km long can receive as much as 1 ton of plastic debris, or 50 thousand plastic bottles of equivalent weight, per month. The plastic tide carries these debris swirling in South China Sea, before they get disintegrated into microplastics and make their way to the Pacific Oceans. By then it would be too late for us to do anything. It is imperative that something is done to prevent the plastics from staying in the tides for too long.

PLASTIC VILLAGE

One of the victims of the Plastic Tide is the indigenous water villages called Kampung. They are stilted settlements that built on shallow waters. In a broad sense, these indigenous villages used to represent the locus of Malay culture. The word, kampung, often conjures up strong sense of autonomy anchored on egalitarian solidarity, mutual aid among neighbors and strong family and kinship. They build their own homes, schools and mosques with whatever available at hand. The entire settlement is built on wooden stilts that are harvested from the adjacent forest. Most of the villagers are fishermen or rely on the sea for living and hence many of them erect fishing traps with nets. However, all these structures, combined with the shallow bathymetry, greatly attenuate the waves and attract all kinds of debris from the ocean, most notably the Plastic Tide.

PLASTIC LANDSCAPE

The design thesis proposes a solution that relies on simpler technologies, with the inclusion of the waste pickers who reside in the water villages. The community is heavily raided by the plastic tides, so they not only have ample reasons to collect the waste, but also the ability to own these operations.

The design thesis also adapts from the technicalities inside a recycling plants and learns recent innovations of small scale plastic recycling. The idea about crafting plastics advocated by David Hakkens is fascinating as refinements and diversification can be introduced into the end product, something that machines can never replicate.

A series of workshops and devices are proposed to be installed in the landscape in an attempt to replicate the processes in the recycling factories, while harnessing the landscape forces to help forge or craft the recycled plastics.

a) Trapper
The trapper system is generated under a sets of parameters,
- 60 degree angle for maximized efficiency,
- negative 2m contour, which is the optimum for a 6m timber post to be piled into the seabed

b) Sorting Station
Some types of plastics such as PET or PVC may produce harmful fumes during the crafting processes. Furthermore, mixing in different types of plastics into the material may produce subpar products that with undesirable material properties.

c) Cleaner
Waste requires rinsing to remove filth and impurities. Since detergents don't work well in the sea, it is more advisable to confine the washing activities in a ponds to avoid any ecological hazard.

d) Shredder
a common shredder unit costs around USD$500 to USD$3000.

e) Dryer
As for the open air drying processes, the sun can be utilized. A dyke and wind shielding plants are built and planted around a flat land.

f) Kiln
a kiln system is generated under a sets of parameters,
- slope less than 30%
- 90 degree.

Melting plastics emits VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) which are mildly toxic to human beings. By embedding the kilns in the landscape, it creates a low oxygen environment whereby the VOCs of melting plastics can be minimized. The subterranean kilns are also built by mud wall which is conducive to absorbing the VOC

g) Cooler
Finally, the stream that feeds into the cleaning pond also feeds into the workshop. It grant people assess to water in this freshwater-scarce island. A cooling tank is essential for the final finishing of crafted plastics.