Dan Paluska
cardboard. tape. motors. bits and bobs. (greater than 90% post consumer content)

...background
We are all consumers. Most of us consume vast quantities of goods. Chances are at some point all these objects spent some time within a cardboard box, whether we actually took the box home or not. Refrigerators, fruit, computers, cereal, our web site order, and just about anything else has spent some time in a cardboard box. When a cardboard box is in your home, you flatten it and place it in the recycle bin. It eases your conscience. You feel good. But how many times have you actually asked where the box came from or where it's going? Even boxes that are made from 'recycled material' can be deceiving. If you read the fine print you will often find them labeled '20% post-consumer content.' This means 80% new material. For every box recycled, 4 boxes worth of new materials are used. Should our well meaning recycling effort be redirected? The original triangular recycling logo reminds us to 'reduce, reuse, recycle.'

...the piece
Recycle Robot is part of a utopian view of the future. Recycle Robot is viewable from two sides to show you what currently is, and what could be. Recycle Robot is the perfect consumer, a cardboard automaton that reuses and recycles all day long. It's made almost entirely from post consumer content -- old cardboard boxes, tubes, and surplus motors. It diligently recycles every box it uses, and it only uses recycled boxes.

The front side of the robot shows you what currently is. The main turn wheel rotates, bringing an assembled box through the curtain wall in the front and side center. The box pauses, gets lifted out of it's holder, and is then flattened. The main wheel rotates again to send the flattened box back out under the curtain wall. This side represents our typical experience. We receive a box from somewhere, flatten it, and send it out again to somewhere else. The curtain wall blocks the view of the backside, representing our lack of knowledge of the beginning and end of the boxes we use.

It is the backside of the machine that represents something new. Flattened boxes arrive through the back curtain wall. They stop in the center. Here a series of robotic mechanisms push and fold the box back up into a closed shape and push it back into the holder. The box is then sent off through the curtain to the other side where the process repeats itself. And on, and on...

Like all utopian views, Recycle Robot has flaws. Cardboard is not meant to live forever and is certainly not meant to be the structure of an automated robot. It will eventually wear itself down to the point where it too will need to be put onto the sidewalk on recycling day.

Recycle Robot is surrounded by parts that didn't make it onto the machine to show that any final product also generates waste. In addition, the design notebook detailing the process of creating the robot can be seen on the far pole to the right of the robot.

...some closing statistics
A very quick web search will reveal the magnitude of cardboard consumption. Colorado University collected 24 tons in the first two weeks of school. The State of Oregon estimates that cardboard is produced at a rate of 285 lbs per person every year. At a weekend fair in Massachusetts, organizers boasted the recycling of 5 tons of cardboard. One fair. One weekend.

For more info on the artbots show, visit artbots.org.

The artist would like to thank the following people: aaron, andrew, chinnie, conor, jack, jeff, and jess.