WC#5 Producer Responsibility - Pop-apart Cell Phones (pg 119) Ryan Thurmer

This article surprised me, since this idea is so brilliantly simple. Apparently today most electronics and cell phones are not recycled because it costs more to pay someone to take them apart and sort the parts than the parts are actually worth. What if these electronics took themselves apart…in one second?! Nokia is developing a phone, and has a prototype for a phone, that does just this. The points that need to pop apart have a “memory alloy spring” to push apart the plastic parts and electronic components. Under a certain laser’s temperature these springs release and the phone is dissembled, in under two seconds. As a student in design I thought this is just what designers need to be designing, finally we are realizing that most of our designs end up in the trash at some point, and that all of this trash is causing loads of problems. Why not design products specifically to be recycled, or that even recycle themselves? In the mean time designing for repair rather than designing to “break then buy a new one” is something everyone can start today. These are definitely all steps toward closing the linear path of production making it a circulating system.