Garbage Sorting for Newbies
By Audrey Tseng, Miranda Ma, Tia Pham, Xiang Liu
Problem and Solution Overview
Incoming students to the University of Washington face many new experiences as they transition through a new school year. In particular, students may be unfamiliar with garbage disposal practices in Washington as a large portion of the student body is made up of out-of-state and international students. As Washington has a higher rate of recycling and composting as compared to the rest of the nation and many other countries, we aim to provide a pain-free introduction to the subject. Our proposed solution is a new, online waste sorting education curriculum for incoming University of Washington students. This would prepare students with the knowledge of proper waste sorting, waste sorting impact, and be incentivized with rewards from UW campus cafes and dining halls.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
As part of our research, we conducted fly-on-the-wall observations and an anonymous survey to gain insights into current garbage disposal habits on campus and garbage disposal background for out-of-state and international students. For our observations, we chose two contrasting locations: the HUB and the Microsoft Cafe. We chose these two locations because we can collect a good quantity of data within our observation period and the waste thrown at these two locations are distinctively different (restaurant and cafe). These methods were chosen so that we could identify avenues for improving the experience of incoming students. Our surveys helped us learn more about the backgrounds of our target students and their familiarity with garbage disposal. It also helped us narrow down the categories that we should focus on for our solution: recycling and compost. Our fly-on-the-wall observations helped us gain insights into important aspects of the current experience as well as identify disposal categories that people struggled to sort, avoiding participants feeling any judgment that may affect their decision making.
Design Research Result and Themes
From the survey we conducted, we discovered that 70% of our participants indicated that they were unfamiliar with one of the garbage disposal options on campus — either recycling or composting. A further 75% stated the distinction between landfill and recycling was the most difficult. Our survey findings agree with our observations as we found some people struggled with correctly recycling and composting. An interesting theme from respondents was the suggestion to improve localization of garbage disposal knowledge. For example, instructions on how to properly dispose of menu items at the Microsoft Cafe or at the HUB could help students who eat at the locations and want to be more sustainable. Some students also mentioned a desire to have a more tangible measure of how much their actions saved when they properly disposed of their waste.
From our fly-on-the-wall observations, we found that most people disposed of their waste correctly. However, we did find some people taking advantage of the instructions by the bins or by observing prior examples. We have also noticed that people had the most trouble differentiating which category paper products belong to, for example, some threw paper straw wrappers into compost while others threw them into recycling.
Proposed Design: Waste Sorting Education Curriculum
This education curriculum will be integrated into the orientation schedule and tasks that incoming students at the University of Washington need to complete on their checklist of items for orientation. To incentivize students to engage and complete the modules, we will consider partnering with cafeterias and cafes on campus to provide those who answer quickly with high accuracy free food coupons to receive free food items around campus. The curriculum will go through sorting examples of items on campus, especially food-contaminated items, and items that are commonly seen in the dining halls at UW, items that can be purchased at the cafeteria and cafes, and waste generated on campus here at UW with a focus on recycling and composting education. The illustration below shows an example implementation of the curriculum as a student progresses through modules to receive a coupon.
The curriculum will also give students a tangible measure of their impact on the environment for items that they correctly sort. In the storyboard below, the student feels better knowing how much they have helped save and may be more likely to continue practicing proper waste disposal.
