Italy recently hosted an international competition to design a machine which could be used by homeless garbage collectors in order to recycle aluminium. Students from the Technological University of the Mixteca in Mexico scooped up the first place award which was handed out in Florence.
A spokesperson for the university, Hernandez Dominguez, said that the winning design was the result of contributions from five students.
“The main characteristic of this machine is that its design allows for easy use by the poor, including most of the homeless, even illiterate,” Dominguez said.
The competition was organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), who elicited contributions from 80 universities across the globe.
The students who contributed to the winning design hope that their government will support the mass production of the machine. In addition, they anticipate receiving bids from recycling companies who may have a commercial use for the device.
Garbage pickers in Mexico can sell aluminium trash by the kilogram to depots which pay 10 pesos, or approximately one dollar, for each kilogram.
The Association for Computing Machinery is the largest educational and scientific computing society in the world. The organization is headquartered in New York.
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