In my group’s research of finding a problem that could be solved with innovation. We came across a entrepreneur named Gregor Gomory who came up with a way to repurpose plastic into building blocks. Gomory developed RePlast, a substance made of plastic sourced from the oceans and machine-compressed into the dimensions of a typical concrete masonry unit, in part because of the work of New Zealand-based engineer Peter Lewis, whose research laid the groundwork for the use of waste plastic to create building materials. This project is still in its early phases; Gomory and his colleagues are looking into potential uses for the new material. It is being managed out of Gomory’s New York and Los Angeles-based business ByFusion. In our research of this new technology, we found that their seemed to be no way to monitor the possible toxic fumes that can come from creating these blocks.

The issue with the toxic fumes cane present itself as a possible future issue. As there isn’t much information on how the plastic is turned into blocks it says that no harsh chemicals or glues are used to create the blocks but instead, they steam and compress the plastic together. This process can still bring the plastic to certain temp and cause some pollutants to rise in the air while making the blocks. The reason this maybe problem as stated in the article this is a small team that is trying to get this idea of the ground. The possibility of overlooking this issue could be very possible many businesses ignore safety issues to minimize costs. The ambition to develop something novel and inventive drives many entrepreneurs. This drive can cause them to overlook safety concerns when it comes to their creations since they are so focused on launching their ideas. One reason why entrepreneurs may overlook safety issues is that they may be more focused on the technical aspects of their invention rather than its potential hazards.

The solution my group came up with would be to install logic controllers to monitors the toxic fumes. Logic controllers can monitor toxic fumes by measuring the concentration of harmful gases in the air. They use sensors that are designed to detect specific types of gases, such as carbon monoxide or sulfur dioxide. When the concentration of these gases exceeds a certain threshold, the logic controller will trigger an alarm or shut down the process. Toxic fumes can pose a serious threat to workers’ health, and it is essential to have a reliable system in place to detect and control them. We also decided on adding some type of encryption and access control to protect the servers the logic controllers would run on. As the protection of communication between logic controllers and servers is a critical aspect of securing industrial control systems. Barriers we can expect would be both a financial and logistics barrier. Being that the company behind Replast is small they may not have the finances to implement logic controllers, servers, and access control and encryption programs while also they might not have the ability to hire and pay the right people to install and monitor these safety procedures. The success of the implementation can be measured through the number of successful cybersecurity attacks that are prevented and once logic controllers are implemented, and we are able to monitor how much fumes are produce and have the system is able to warn us when fumes are too high.