Reuse, Recycle and Reduce Garbage Scheme

Dear all,

in our everyday life, we do produce an impressive amount of waist and garbage; thanks to our beloved consumption society.

Under the rightful pressure of our governments and city councils, I have realized that much of the garbage is still useful since it can be either reused by others or recycled. I have found out that it is not because I do not need an object that it should be destroyed or it should increase the size of one of our huge rubbish yards.

This becomes even more important when we know that more 2 billion human beings (India, China and Brasil) will soon live our sacred "quality of life", consume supermarket goods and throw away as much as we do (do we really need to ? :( For example, my wife and I have decided that we cannot afford a new car, but we will only settle for the best European sedan cars, having the best road performance and safety, so we buy them used.

If you look closely at your garbage bin, you shall see that there is a lot there which is still in correct and worthy condition and that's a complete shame that we trow it all away. How inconsiderate this can be when we know that so many would simply accept to live with it ? 

Here at the PACCAR Robotics and Vision Laboratory, we have started a Reuse, Recycle and Reduce scheme. We have started a programme which is trying to reuse every mechanical parts available in any phased-out computer, VHS machine, printer, drive or peripheral. In fact, all these contain several steppers, DC motors, gears, shafts, springs, plates, srews and nuts which are rarely faulty. We were pleased to see that many computer stores of the Preston area has responded very positively to this programme and have started to keep some equipment for us to pick up. Inasmuch, the technology department IT people are collaborating quite well to our scheme and have provided us with nice ones too.

We are now building a nice store of second hand mechanical parts which shall be used by our students and researchers in their robot designs and mechatronical projects.

Luc