iCAN: Recycle and Compost Right

By Nate Chen, Tiffany Guo, Chae Won Lee, Elizabeth Xiong

Contributors: Nate Chen, Tiffany Guo, Chae Won Lee, Elizabeth Xiong

Problem and Solution Overview

It is a well-known issue that trash is bad for the environment. We have grown up with constant reminders to “reduce, reuse, and recycle”, but the consequence for not recycling or composting is not immediate, apparent, or individual. As our lives get busier and busier, garbage disposal becomes just a mundane, roughly-informed task, reliant on habits we’ve built upon for years, and without much further thought. But improper garbage disposal does have its negative effects, and they compound: poor trash sorting at the individual level creates sorting issues at waste management plants, which causes landfills to pile up faster, polluting the air and groundwater, and slowly making the Earth less habitable. Our goal is to educate people at the individual level of how to sort their trash, focusing especially on situations where people either don’t know how to dispose of certain trash or don’t have the resources available to, and we believe that a specialized trash can will help in reducing the pressure on landfills and ingraining or improving positive trash disposal habits in people, encouraging them to care for the environment in little ways with big impacts.

Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants

Research Goals

Our research goals were to learn about people’s garbage disposal habits, how they vary by age, location, etc., and how to improve upon negative habits in the most informative and streamlined method possible. To get a better grasp of this information, we chose two research methods, interviews and personal inventories. Interviews were used to let potential stakeholders describe in their own words how they dispose of their trash, how they feel about the chore, and how they feel they can improve upon their own behavior, allowing us to learn what kinds of methods and tools potential stakeholders would be most willing to use. Personal inventories were used to gain insight on the current state of potential stakeholders’ garbage disposal setup with as much honesty and transparency as possible, teaching us the constraints possible tools would need to fall within, and what existing habits could use further improvement.

Stakeholders

Our primary stakeholders are tech-savvy adults in metropolitan areas who are environmentally conscious/would like to improve their waste-sorting habits. The lives of these adults are often fairly fast-paced due to schoolwork or their careers, and their living situation is often not very spacious, so many face difficulty disposing of garbage in an organized and thoughtful manner unless the tools are actively provided and the knowledge and methods of garbage disposal are facilitated. Our goal is to dissuade from the mindset of “a lack of direct impact of improper garbage disposal on the individual”, as improper garbage disposal can have adverse effects on waste disposal plants, and subsequently many aspects of the environment.

Participants

We interviewed six people and got personal inventories from ten people. Most (but not all) participants were UW students, and all participants lived in relatively small living spaces. Interviews were conducted in-person, asking about personal behaviors of and confidence about garbage disposal, resources they had available concerning garbage disposal, and personal outlook on the impact of recycling and composting. Personal inventories were conducted in a voluntary online anonymous survey, asking similar questions to the interview, in addition to questions about living conditions and the current state of the participant’s trash disposal setup.

Research Results and Themes

Through the interview process, we found that throwing trash away is a quick snap decision and not a process that users are motivated to invest more time and effort into. A typical person recycles based on their general knowledge (plastic and paper in recyclables) and throws everything else in the landfill bin. While interviewees confessed they are often confused about how to recycle some materials (e.g. aluminum foil), they rarely look it up. Half of the personal inventory survey respondents didn’t have compost bins in the first place and replied they wouldn’t even with a bin because it’s extra work to take out another bag of compostables and could smell more quickly.

Furthermore, our research indicates that people don’t keep track of their waste habits, whether it’s tracking waste volume or waste types. People have different bins (everyone has a general trash bin, 80% have recycling, 50% have compost) but have no idea if they’re recycling and composting correctly or how much landfill/trash they’re producing in their household. Our research suggests the design should prioritize making recycling easy/less time consuming and perhaps have an opt-in option for learning more about recycling correction which may be more time consuming.

Proposed Design

To address the need for reducing incorrect sorting and fostering correct waste sorting habits at the individual level, we are proposing a two-part solution that allows for users to more effectively sort their waste and monitor their habits. From our research findings, we noticed that the majority of participants had a desire to correctly manage recycling, waste and compost but didn’t have the means (like the separate bins) or education necessary to do it. These results inspired our potential technological solution because it led us to designing built in compartments that give instant feedback about sorting correctness. Since participants had interest in learning more about waste sorting and improving their habits, we thought a corresponding app would be helpful to collect data from the bins and display it to the user.

That said, our proposed solution consists of two parts: the iCAN bin with separate compartments and a companion app. Both elements will be described further below!

iCAN bin:

The iCAN trash bin would both proactively inform users of incorrect sorting as well as internally sort any incorrect items. We have planned the following features:

• The trash bin consists of 3 sections: recycle, trash, and optionally, compost. Three bin liners can be placed in each respective section.
• There are sensors at the opening of each section to scan each item that is placed in. These sensors are able to analyze the composition of the item, and send this data to the companion app.
• To discourage users from incorrectly sorting, the bin lights up red if the sensors detect that the item being thrown into the section is of an incorrect type. Otherwise if the placement is correct, the trashbin lights up green. See below for an example

• However, if the user ignores the red light and chooses to incorrectly sort an item, then the internal machinery of the trash bin is able to sort the item itself. There is a buffer space in the upper part of the bin, in which the lever dividers are able to move the item to the correct section, and then can be deposited into the bin liner. See below storyboard as an example of this feature.

iCAN app:

This is a mobile app that is designed to be wirelessly paired with a specialized trash can with multiple compartments for trash, recycling, and optionally composting.

• The app’s main goal is to provide an easy way for households to see and track their waste. By using the data received from the companion bin, it tracks waste volume trends, waste composition trends, and user sorting accuracy.
• This app tracks overall waste volume throughout the months and includes a line graph to show volume per month.
• The social component of the app may also include a window that lets you see your friends’ sorting accuracy and promote healthy competition to do better. We may also include a quick guide to waste sorting dos and don’ts that can be an educational tool.
• The main page of the app includes a pie chart that displays sorting accuracy and a daily history list with a count of the items thrown. See below for an example.