An Analysis of Centro de Acopio de Reciclables in Ciudad del Saber, Panama

In Ciudad del Saber, Fundación de Acción Social Panamá operates a recycling center that faces a budget deficit, inefficiencies with its operation, and an unsuccessful public education effort. Through working remotely with our sponsor, Fundación Ciudad del Saber, the team strived to uncover the problems, improve the recycling operation, and educate the visitors about the importance and correct practices of recycling. By using literature review, an online survey, four interviews, and two virtual tours, we discovered the biggest issue at the center is material contamination. Using this result and others, we proposed six recommendations about workers’ training/retraining, tailored education programs, visual control usage, layout rearrangement, equipment usage, and forecasting and scheduling.


Project Report, Presentation, and Data: