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/Inspiration/

Our inspiration comes from Huang Ayi’s need. Huang Ayi has been a cleaning lady in NYU Shanghai academic building for almost 6 years, however, she does not have a cleaning cart to carry her cleaning equipment, especially her water bucket which weighs more than 15 kg. In order to solve her problem of the heavyweight of the bucket, we were inspired by ayis from lower floors, who have cleaning carts to carry the bucket. We decided to make a trailer out of recycled material especially for Huang ayi to carry her water bucket more conveniently.

 

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/Process/

Firstly, we sketched how we are going to make the trailer for the bucket. We decided to use our new material to make the wheel, the wheel bracket, and also the handle and the fence. Then, we did multiple experiments to composite different materials. And we finally determined on HDPE bricks made out of plastic bottle caps. After making a prototype trailer which is smaller than the actual one, we tested that the wheel made out of new material can stand heavyweight and is firm and smooth enough to slide in the corridors and rooms on the 8th floor. After the feedback we get from the prototype presentation, we know that Ayi prefers a rope handle but not a stationary stick handle. We used a bigger, thicker wooden circular board as the base of the trailer, cut a handle with our new material, and used thick rope to connect it to the base. Then, we screwed four wheels from our prototype. Finally, we used a wood ring as the fence and decorated it with the HDPE sheet (new material).

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/Experiment/

The series of experiments contains deciding to use an oven or heat pressor to make the HDPE brick. Eventually, we found that the heatpressor is not capable of maintaining the thickness of the HDPE brick so we chose to use the oven. Then, we tested three different plastics, HDPE, PP, and PET, since we can collect these three materials from our daily life. We found that HDPE is the firmest material that can easily melt and mold by bending three materials and also research for their properties. At last, we decided to use an oven to make and mold HDPE bricks as our new material for the trailer.

 

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/Failure/

During our process of making the trailer, we encountered various problems. Firstly, it is hard to measure the position we screw the wheels on such a big wooden base. In order to solve this, we actually carved signs using the CNC machine. The machine is actually accurate enough to measure all the dimensions. The other problem is when we made the first trail of the fence, we planned to stack plastic caps as the fence. However, it is not stable enough and it is also not satisfying aesthetically. Hence, after Marcela and Andy’s suggestions, we decided to use a wood ring as the fence then stick a ring made out of our colorful new material to keep the aesthetic.

 

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/Success (Result)/

The result was pretty satisfying. After we finished the final product, we took the trailer to ayi's room and ayi herself tries to use the trailer without our guidance. The process is quite simple, so ayi comprehends its function swiftly. After she put the bucket full of water on the trailer and slide it deliberately along the corridor, she showed pure pleasure and satisfaction. Then, ayi showed that how will she bend the rope and tie on the hook on her wall to storage the trailer. She expressed gravitation and also promised us she will use the trailer even one day she does not work here anymore. Hence, we succeeded.

 

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/Future/

How can the project be implemented in Shanghai/any other place

Although we took a whole semester-long effort on the designing of the trailer, the most part of our hard work is making experiments and multiple attempts of how to make it perfect. In fact, the handle, the ring, and the wheel can be easily remade and cut since we kept all the illustrator file. Also, collecting bottle caps is not hard. So, in my opinion. in most of the office buildings where the sanitary staff does not have a large cleaning trailer can use our small bucket trailer to carry heavy stuff like water buckets.

 

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/Further/

How can the project educate people and raise awareness of environmental issues

While talking about recycling plastic, most people will say recycling plastic bags, plastic boxes, and plastic bottles. However, plastic caps, although small, is versatile and firm enough to upcycle into new designs due to their HDPE material properties. Our trailer actually shows people that the colorful bottle caps can be a perfect medium to make decorations and also practical components like small wheels and handles. Plastic caps are so easy to collect due to how much plastic bottles we threw away every day. Hence, our product raises awareness that plastic bottle caps can also be a good material to reuse and upcycle, we cannot just throw them away and think it will not pollute the environment since it is very small. After the project, I am confident to say plastic caps have a huge potential that I am looking forward to seeing new designs by upcycling them.