COPPER COLLECTOR

The Copper Collector is a simple hand tool with which you can cut PVC cables in large quantities and separate the copper or aluminium from the plastic in a clean way. 
The idea refers to the current situation in Africa, where people burn large heaps of cables with the most primitive means to get to the valuable copper. This results in toxic pollutants for humans and nature. The tool should solve this problem.
It consists of two individual parts and a replaceable cutting edge. Both parts are made of casted steel and are ergonomically shaped so that they can be used for a long time to work with.
Due to the special shape of the tool it is possible to recycle different sizes of cables and to extract the raw material copper and aluminium from them.

Global Wastelands

by Sandro Wiegand

My concept is based on an imaginary scenario that takes place in the future. It’s called Global Wasteland and refers to a current problem in Africa. In the following short story this problem becomes a global doomsday scenario, in which the earth resembles a huge garbage dump.

It was a very hot day, the sun stood very high in the sky. The air seemed to be steaming, no, it really was steaming. The ground under your feet seemed to be burning, no, it really was burning. What a terrible place is this where we are right here? Where the sky is covered with smoke and ashes and the ground is only burned from fire and there is no a single spot of green. It is the home of the little Aaron, his family and thousands of other people. Aaron and his family live in a small dwelling, it resembles a wooden shack. They don’t own very much, the most valuable things they own are three cows, they once had four but one starved to death last week. Just over there, at the small electric scrap fires burn day and night not far from their hut. The workers melt down the valuable metals in a really primitive way, and the results are a lot of smoke and fumes. Aaron’s father said he shouldn’t inhale them, but yesterday Aaron tried to take off his noseplugs and had to find out that the smoke stinks terribly and that it causes the airways to burn a lot. Many elderly people from the slum, in which Aaron lives, have no noseplugs, they all have difficulties breathing and two thirds have a bad cough. Aaron is still a child but he has no normal life like other children in richer regions of the world. He doesn’t go to school and he doesn’t have any toys as it would be typical for children of his age. On his eighth birthday, he got a present from his father, a set of small tools to help him look for junk in the garbage. Among them are a small rake, different sieves, a pipette and a plate, like it’s known from ancient gold panning times.

With these tools Aaron makes himself on the way every day to search in the huge mountains of rubbish for something of value, what the few people, who can still afford it, throw away. In order not to be constantly exposed to the dust and to the bad air, he wears his noseplugs. As he now in one place settled down in the shade of one of the rubbish heaps and began the loose ground that gradually turned out to be of rotting garbage remains and scrap consisted of removing the contents piece by piece and tools to search for metals and the same he discovered a half rotten animal. He quickly poured the hole, which he had dug with his hands, back in. He looked for another place. Once there he sat down and thought. Every day animals and people die in the slums on the rubbish dumps, just like their cow died a few days ago. And no one here has the money to afford a funeral. The thought about walking on corpses causes a strong disgust in him. But he himself can’t do anything about it. And the rich people don’t seem to mind that they are also going over dead bodies too. Most likely because they won’t see it, he thought. It doesn’t help, after all, if he don’t come home tonight without anything, he and his family might not be able to afford the next ration. He doesn’t have time to play, but there are also other children in his age but like him they all have to work. Aaron has no friends, because they never stay long anywhere. As soon as a region of huge landscapes of landfills is exhausted he and his family move on. They leave the small dwelling immediately, because it exists anyway only to the largest part made of scrap parts. They then often hike several miles further to another place. They build the new dwelling from the scrap they can find on the spot, because it seems like garbage and scrap are probably the only things that can be found endless, in this dreary environment.