Containment Zones Within our Homes
COVID 19 has drastically changed the way we interact with objects around us. We have started taking personal hygiene more seriously. The ritual of washing hands, sanitizing things before use, that started as a compulsion is becoming a habit.
TinkerLabs is taking some Creative Leaps as an effort to fill this gap with frugal interventions. It is our attempt to use everyday objects to work around the everyday problems we face.
The Problem
Most of us are discarding a lot of things we would’ve normally re-used, out of the worry that the virus might be lurking around on all surfaces. Given that health and safety trump all our other concerns, reusing has become synonymous with spreading the virus while disposable alternatives are claiming to be the hero in the new normal!
As reported by The Shooting Star, discarded plastic masks are already washing up on Hong Kong’s beaches. In the US, single-use plastic usage is estimated to have gone up by a whopping 250–300%. In India, where waste management is already a huge issue, the fight against single-use plastic has taken a backseat.
In times like these, when our priorities have changed and disposable alternatives seem like a much safer choice, we wondered if there was a way to reduce the waste being generated as a by-product of the ‘Open & Throw’ routine.
We observed different reactions to things that enter the house from outside, when our risk perceptions are highest and found that we have different perceptions of safety for different objects. For example, after a visit outdoors, phones were perceived to be safe even when they’d touched multiple surfaces while grocery packets were deemed highly unsafe and were often left at the point of entry of the house.
We thought of borrowing the country strategy of using visual markers to demarcate containment zones within the house. Just as the zones are colour-coded red, orange and green based on the incidence of coronavirus cases, the zones inside the house could be colour coded based on the different levels of the user’s perception of safety.
Other visual markers such as colourful bindis or stickers could also be used. The objects placed in the containment zones could be quarantined and sanitised accordingly. This could be at the entry point of the house or at a spot which gets ample sunlight. Packaging, such as plastic bags, which are otherwise thrown away as a result of the Open and Throw routine, could be left in the containment zone and could be directly taken from there for the next grocery run.
Let us know of any other way that comes to your mind to safely reuse things in these times. Stay tuned to take creative leaps with us!
