Development of Leather Cutting Board from Plastic Waste

Abstract

Cutting is the process in which goods or garment material are cut and converted into pattern shapes of the goods or garment components. There are two methods of Leather cutting, which are hand cutting and machine cutting. Hand cutting is done with the use of hand knife, cutting board and cutting patterns. Machine cutting can be done using semi-automatic cutting machines or fully-automatic cutting machines. Currently, in Ethiopia, different local and foreign investors are participating in leather products manufacturing. Most of the leather product manufacturing industry and some Small and Medium enterprise’s (SME’s) in the country are using leather cutting machines in order to cut leather goods or garment parts. Most of the industry and SMEs are using imported cutting board made of plastics and rubbers. However, these cutting boards are expensive.   This research aimed at developing a cutting board made from HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene) plastic waste as main material, calcium carbonate as a filler and glass fiber as a reinforcing material. Primary and secondary data gathering techniques were applied simultaneously. Primary data were collected through interview and field observation. Secondary data was gathered by reviewing different literature. The cutting board developed through collecting HDPE plastic waste, washing, shredding and melting the shredded plastic with filler and reinforcing material. The melted plastic poured in to cutting board mold and cooled. The developed cutting board was compared with HDPE cutting board available in the local market. The developed board showed relative compression and hardness properties with the HDPE cutting board available in the market. In the cost analysis, the developed cutting board is cheaper than the cutting board which available in the market. However, the cutting board in the market has better surface texture and quality than the developed cutting board. Melting HDPE plastic waste using metal or clay cooking pots and charcoal fire is a tedious task and smoke from the fire will cause human health problem and will affect environment. Consequently, manual plastic melting method is not feasible for mass production, because it is difficult to control the amount of heat (charcoal fire) during melting process. Based on this the authors recommend using machine based plastic melting and molding during HDPE and related plastic recycling.