Design Brief

Introduction

Waste for Life (WFL) is a not-for-profit organization founded and managed by Professor Caroline Baillie and partner Eric Feinblatt. The team has worked since 2006 supporting marginalized communities to develop autonomous income streams by manufacturing composite material products (fibre-reinforced plastic) from the garbage they collect. There are currently two programs being planned with the ExSJ in SMSE and WFL, together with communities in Tijuana, and each will each be the focus of a capstone design project:

• Alacrán Canyon is one of the many tributary canyons that feed into Los Laureles Canyon in Tijuana, part of the watershed for the Tijuana River Estuary spanning northwestern Mexico and ending in the wetlands of Imperial Beach. The Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (TRNERR) has the enormous task of trying to clean up the river estuary and looking after the health of the native flora and fauna, which thrive in this watershed wetlands. Recently, the Engineering Exchange for Social Justice (ExSJ) in the Shiley Marcos School of Engineering teamed up with TRNERR to help develop a waste recycling community business program at the Templo de Embajadores de Jesus in Alacrán Canyon, where refugees are housed and supported in this community centre by Pastor Gustavo Banda and his wife, Zaida Guillen.
• Advancing Students Forward. The mission of ASF is to provide underserved Mexican students access to education and support for academic success so that they can create a promising future for themselves and for the community in which they live. For a comprehensive overview of the organization visit the website: https://advancingstudentsforward.org/ ASF has expressed an interest in working with ExSJ and Waste for Life to develop a waste based community education and business development program.

Capstone projects 2020/2021

During 2019/2020 students from ENGR 351 and ENGR 494 as well as one capstone design team did exploratory studies to assess the feasibility of WFL projects in both contexts. The following sections describe ways in which our students are invited to take the programs to the next stage in 2020/2021.

• One capstone team will support Alacránes and one will support ASF. Both teams will begin by following a similar approach, but due to the very different contexts, it is likely that the projects will take distinct pathways. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, there will be a need to do much of the community participation work online, and at least one Spanish speaker is required per team. Materials and manufacturing engineering knowledge and skills would be a benefit. Each team will work with local partners at a distance to research and co-design a plan for:

—Waste materials collection and separation

—Product development – selection of optimal product and manufacturing process for appropriate community manufacture and marketing

—Waste for Life workshop/factory – plans for equipment needs, workshop layout, electricity requirements and manufacture workflow

The projects will both culminate in the design of a community implementation manual (in Spanish) with photos and simple explanations for each step of the program. See the full project brief for more details.

All majors welcome. Spanish speakers will be given priority. If there is sufficient interest there will be two teams formed around this project for two different sites in Tijuana.