Creating Value From Waste as Part of a Sustainable Future

Each year in the US, approximately 300 billion disposable protective gloves are used across different industries. While some of these materials are technically recyclable, the vast majority of these gloves are used once before they are disposed of in landfills. This creates a huge amount of waste. Gloves are essential in many occupations to protect wearers from hazardous materials they encounter on the job. It is these same hazardous materials that make gloves difficult to recycle and impossible to reuse. An additional problem is scarcity of supply during periods of high demand. If events occur which dramatically increase the demand for disposable PPE, like is occurring now with the COVID19 crisis, it can become difficult and expensive to maintain a steady supply of disposable gloves. Since these gloves are absolutely necessary for worker safety, a lack of supply threatens the ability of essential businesses to continue work. Team Volvo, consisting of students from Stanford University and BTH, has been tasked by Volvo Group to explore the waste management space and design a solution to a significant problem within this space. The team chose to address the issue of disposable protective gloves because a solution to this problem creates benefits in two ways:
- Reducing the amount of landfill waste created by PPE
- Decreasing the dependence of essential services like waste management facilities and hospitals on external supply chains

Team Volvo has realized these benefits by creating a closed loop glove manufacturing solution which can be deployed onsite to convert used gloves into sterile, new gloves. This system is built around a new type of glove material, Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA), which is soluble in water but resistant to the oils and chemicals often experienced at waste management facilities. The system takes in soiled gloves and rinses them before dissolving the PVA in water and sterilizing the resulting solution. This solution then enters the molding unit, in which it is reformed into new gloves which are ready for use.

Madan, Juhi; Bolen, Bennett; Yang, Emily; Zuñiga, Mikel; Erikkson, Albert; Backman, Adam; Stjernberg, Johan; Skoog, Marcus; Sjöberg, Axel. (2020). Creating Value From Waste as Part of a Sustainable Future
. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/dw947kz5195