Technology scrap material´s extended life cycle applied to learning environments

Abstract

Planned obsolescence was created in the need to maintain growing economy by increasing sales of high volume items with short life cycle, so as to have balance within the enterprises. Although in the beginning this was beneficial, it brought other consequences such as ecological imbalance, due to the wild consumption of nonrenewable energy and the scrap excess that last thousands of years to break down. Today the development of technology is so fast that items such as cellphones, computers, TVs, etc. that have limited life cycle and get promptly obsolete, and then they become waste. This leads in pollution and environment damage. It is better to recycle all this materials and to have a different mindset in the university community in order to reduce the environment damage, better life quality and a sense of social responsibility. The proposal to develop sustainability standards is an approachable solution to create products to be consumed and that at the same time can be recyclable and easily transformed. It is possible to teach to the new generations the need to extend the life cycle of the products and / or to recycle materials from those obsolete technology items. This qualitative research found that since 2012, the planned obsolescence topic has been taught in the Formación Sociocultural I subject, in the Information Technology (IT) area at the Universidad Tecnológica de Puebla. Students were asked to develop from technology products scrap three types of items: ornaments, products of daily use, and finally learning supplies. It was found that the learning supplies were a very good option because those could be used by several students for many more years, which is the main objective of recycling.Therefore this qualitative research proposes to reuse scrap technology material products, to make learning supplies and then give social benefits and at the same time to reduce pollution.