Project Blue
- July 1, 2014
- View on GitHub
Project Blue, originally standing for ‘Bottles, Linkages, and their Underlining Ergonomics,’ is my first (and only) industrial design project in which I conducted a research and redesigned the plastic bottle. I understood that polyethene terephthalate, a plastic resin and the most common type of polyester, is the material which makes the popular ‘PET’ bottles.
According to the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR), the gross water bottle recycling rate was only 38.6% last year. This means that almost 2 out of 3 bottles are pollution our planet, and I tried to create a better way.
It started on a tissue paper at a restaurant, and ended up as the project that introduced me to the world of Autodesk and SolidWorks. I designed a much more environment-friendly plastic bottle with an ergonomic design that aids both the drinker and the world around her. I kept in mind production, transportation, and usage, and asked questions like ‘How much space is being wasted on transporting cylindrical bottles on a rectangular truck?’ to discover innovative solutions.
One of the major decisions I made was to design a bottle with a triangular base instead of the usual cylindrical. This helped accomodate twice the number of bottles with the same volume in the same surface area. This means directly halving the transporation costs, since double the number of bottles can now travel in the same vehicle. This was also tested to have a good grip, and min- imizes water droplet condensation on the hand while holding the bottle or drinking from it. Instead of sharp edges, I gave the bottle a light radius, which also helped hold it more easily and applied less pressure on the hand of the holder.