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The paper expounds a senior design project that was undertaken to convert plastic waste into utilitarian artifacts. The paper presents here the practice followed by the authors in their respective Department of Electrical Engineering Technology at Duy Tan University, Da Nang, Vietnam and Purdue University Northwest, Hammond, Indiana. This paper describes the following promising solution: (a) set up and organize a system for collecting plastic used for water and soda bottles, (b) design and manufacture production line for automatically processing plastic bottles to make plastic ribbons of various sizes, (c) use the plastic ribbon to make a prototype of useful products like tables, chairs, roofing, decorations, etc. This paper covers the design details of three machines that are core in the successful implementation of the project. The first machine converts waste plastic into plastic ribbon. The second machine is for the straightening of the plastic ribbon. The third machine is for kneading straight plastic ribbon into various artifacts of choice. The paper brings forth the projects economic and social benefits. On the economical side, this will minimize all expenditures for waste processing related to disposition of the plastic waste, create more jobs, especially in rural areas, and providing plastic products with reasonable price for low income population. On the social side, this will improve environmental conditions, reduce landfill waste, and eliminate spreading of disease due to contamination from burning and melting of plastics. The project enhances students' awareness of ecology, and the environmental protection of community. The pedagogy of the course delivery is based on Interactive Learning Model". The paper elaborates the benefits derived through the pedagogical approaches of keeping the learner actively engaged in all aspects of discovery and design. The course interactively involves the learner in directing and defining the material under discourse. The paper presents the fine points of pedagogical approach that were implemented in successful completion of this course. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2018."
