How Might We Make Recycling Less Confusing?
Improving the public’s understanding and use of public waste management systems
In 2008, Calgarians, on average, sent 712 kilograms to the landfill (Bell, 2018)
In 2017, Calgarians, on average, sent 368 kilograms to the landfill; a 48% reduction over 9 years (Bell)
Calgary’s residential recycling program has contributed to this 48% reduction, but a City of Calgary study found that approximately 80% of waste found in black bins could have been diverted from the landfill (Bell)
We limited our design thinking challenge to waste management and recycling in public spaces, like malls and office tower food courts. We did some research on the psychology of recycling and also polled our own experience in these spaces to build our empathy map to identify the issues, then chose a few of those issues to explore further, using the 5 Whys method to get to a root cause. We identified our root cause as “Recycling is confusing because there are multiple waste management companies, resulting in inconsistencies in waste collection receptacles”. We brainstormed many ideas on how we could make recycling less confusing. We decided to test if aligning the colour and symbology between residential and public (commercial) waste management systems would help our users transfer the knowledge they use at home to the public space.
View our entire assignment on our Google Site: https://sites.google.com/view/bmc-377-group-project/home
We hope you find our research and prototype interesting, and challenge you with
“How might you make recycling less confusing?”
Many thanks to our team of contributors for this project:
Catherine Fisher, Jean Paterson, Marisa Mazepa, Pamela R Jones.
Find links our references and design thinking outputs here.
