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A participatory approach for determining appropriate strategies for managing and recycling plastic waste using 3D printing technologies

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Abstract

There are considerable amounts of plastic waste generated in university campuses which led to seriously consider achieving sustainability with waste recycling. Digital manufacturing technologies are offering approaches to convert plastic waste into materials to produce new products. There is a need to identify appropriate strategies for recycling plastic waste. This paper aims at identifying them in a university campus using a participatory approach. The Delphi technique is utilized as a group judgement in the workshop conducted at Assiut university campus. The specific findings of this paper include that university community has identified litter bins, educational models, and lighting fixtures as the most popular 3D-printed products made from recycled plastic bottles. When determining the affordable prices of recycled 3D-printed products, the time spent creating them and the amount produced were found to be the most important factors among the top five. On the university campus, the top five locations for collecting plastic waste were found to be next to sales outlets and on pedestrian paths at road intersections. Regarding the collection of PET plastic bottles, empty bottles and clean bottles were the two most preferred conditions out of the top five. Five locations are identified for mobile-lab awareness tours.

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Abbreviations

3D:

Three-dimensional

AHP:

Analytic hierarchy process

PET:

Poly-ethylene terephthalate

SWM:

Solid waste management

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful and thankful to STIFA for providing support and funds to this study. The authors would also like to thank Assiut University for hosting and providing the facilities to conduct this study.

Funding

This work is supported by STIFA (Science, Technology & Innovation Funding Authority) in the Ministry of Scientific Research, Egypt through project no. 37054.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architectural Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Assiut University, Asyut, Egypt

    Rabee M. Reffat, Julia A. Wadie & Wael H. Yousef

  2. Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, 315100, China

    Rabee M. Reffat

Authors
  1. Rabee M. Reffat
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  2. Julia A. Wadie
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  3. Wael H. Yousef
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Contributions

RR: Conceptualization, Methodology, Analysis, Writing, Reviewing, and editing. JW: Data collection, Online Questionnaires. WY: Data collection, Workshop preparation and organization.

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Correspondence to Rabee M. Reffat.

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Reffat, R.M., Wadie, J.A. & Yousef, W.H. A participatory approach for determining appropriate strategies for managing and recycling plastic waste using 3D printing technologies. J Mater Cycles Waste Manag 26, 162–174 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-023-01833-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-023-01833-2

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