Bins
1st Place Winner
“Expand Recycling”
Springtime
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
4th Bin Design team:
Lovisa Nersing, Giovanni Doci, John Kock, Marcel Schreuder, Niels Caris, Volker Pflüger, Christian Wiciok, Renze Rispens, Cornelia Einicke
Project Summary:
The 4th bin is intended to stand in the common recycling area for apartment and office buildings. The facility manager regularly moves the recycling containers to the curbside and just does the same with the 4th bin when it is full. A transmitter and a sensor in the 4th bin alerts the recycling company when it is moved from the original spot. So the recycling company can customize the pickup routes and work more efficiently.
The whole ECYCLE-system consists of the 4th bin for recyclable electronics and a vehicle for manual collection of reusable electronics.
The expandable 4th bin:
- Takes up only the space that is necessary for it’s content.
- The low starting mode and gradually increasing height of the bin allows a low drop for fragile electronics.
- The expansion gives visual feedback to the facility manager.
- A maximum size bin means it needs to be emptied.
- The RFID locking system ensures that only residents with a valid RFID tag can open the bin.
- A designated person has a special access tag that also unlocks the wheels.
- The main material is Biopregs®, an environmentally friendly biocomposite that can be folded to create the two main parts of the bin.
- Electronics requires gentle emptying in the pickup-vehicle. This is solved with a reusable bag which is lifted out of the bin with a crane and placed carefully in a pallet container on the vehicle.
- The bag is made of a heavy duty fabric with a chemical proof coating.
Incentives:
With the 4th bin dispose electronics responsibly becomes just as easy as recycling a plastic bottle. The disposal bin is right next to the already existing bins. It opens automatically; all you have to do is having your personal RFID tag with you. With its friendly and warm color it fits perfectly to the already existing bins. The functional parts like the locking system or the button to expand the bin are also colored. The anthracite color of the inner part emphasizes the growing volume. This also helps the facility manager to estimate when the bin has to be emptied. Everything he has to do then is to move the bin onto the street. The recycling company is notified automatically.
The additional drive-around collection van for still-working devices could become more than just a drop-off point. It could create a neighborhood meeting place, serve as an educational spot, bring a whole new community thinking to life. The ECYCLE crowd is about to evolve.
Jury Comments:
“I like this design because it’s a simple bin to hold electronic waste, but it has one clear, clean, simple innovation—the telescoping expansion. It’s not loaded with lots of small details that contribute to its whole, it’s got a singular focal point, which is why its strong”.
-Scott Henderson
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2nd Place Winner
Smart Design
New York, NY
Design Team: Alistair Bramley, Colin Kelly, Carolina Krupinska
Project Summary:
The Problem: Handling ewaste is a difficult problem due to the variety of different types of products that _it covers and the lack of a simple and coherent system. Large amounts of ewaste _are never recycled, and even when it does enter the recycling stream it can be shipped over large distances to be recycled through energy intensive processes or even be illegally dumped in third world countries.
The Solution: Our solution is to provide a system that deals with ewaste in three ways, depending on its type and condition, in order to reduce the recycling process’ environmental impact.
The system is comprised of:
Bin
The bin would be permanently placed in residential buildings providing a space for people to recycle broken or old electronic items, batteries etc. Users can also sell old high value items for refurbishment and resale by agreeing on a price via the associated website and sending them via the bin. The bin provides packaging for these items to ensure that they are well protected when in transit and will re-enter the product system using a minimum of energy.
Cart
The cart is a temporary mobile venue for larger items that are infrequently recycled as well as a _place for residents in a building to reuse unwanted items. Users can request a cart via twitter and either leave their unwanted electronic items to be picked up or announce to other building residents that they are giving them away.
Truck
The truck collects the ewaste from the bins and carts and delivers it to accredited recycling and refurbishment centres.
Website
The website acts as the hub for the system, explaining its overall operation, enabling people to request a bin or cart for their building, agree on a price to sell items for refurbishment.
Twitter
Using Twitter the bin can tell the system that it is full and needs to be emptied. Users can request carts to recycle or give away larger, less frequently recycled items that will not fit in the bin. They can also use twitter to inform other building residents of items that they are giving away.
The Incentive:
- The Benefit
- By creating a system that focuses on:
- Reusing locally
- Recycling transparently
- Refurbishing efficiently
We can process ewaste in a way that not only minimizes its volume but also reduce the effect that processing it has on the environment. Also by allowing people to use the 4th bin as a ‘selling’ tool the system becomes an incentive to recycle it properly.
Jury Comments:
“We liked the very systematic ways in which this entry considered different e-cycling scenarios. While there were other entries that proposed pickup request phone numbers and enveloped, this entry gave us the most comprehensive system for reuse/refurbish and recycle solutions. For example, it integrates a web=based pickup and proposes staying in contact through Twitter. Relative to this thoughtful system, the two physical bins themselves are not as impressive. The design was benign enough to not get eliminated but it did not explicitly proposed creative solutions to the problem of security control or of heavy equipments falling on top of each other”.
-Aki Ishida
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2nd Place Winner
“e-Bin”
Studio Baharash
London, UK
Designer: Baharash Bagherian
Project Summary:
“e-Bin” is a smart, mobile and versatile electronic recycling bin, designed for both outdoor and indoor use.
With integrated touch screen technology, the bin can be programmed to communicate relevant information with both the user and the recycling company. For example the bin can tell the user if it is full and suggest the location of the next nearest bin, while informing the recycling company to come and empty its contents. It can also tell the user if their item is not suitable for recycling, etc…
The bin can hold items as large as televisions, and can fit through a doorway for easy transport.
Its economical mass-production design adds to its uniqueness. Sheets of high quality carbon fiber are vacuum-formed to make relevant parts of the bin, creating a durable, strong, all-weather and lightweight bin.
The “e-Bin” does not need to be connected to an electrical source as it uses solar power to recharge its touch screen lid. The smart bin can only become maneuverable, when an administrator logs into it.
The logo is designed using a composition of three symbols:
- recycling symbol
- “e” for electronic
- electric power cord
The end result of this composition is a unique logo, which is easy to read and understand in any scale.
Its minimal and uncluttered shape allows for a variety of economical surface printing applications. The logo is also economically designed for the purpose of printing in only one colour, which can be altered to suit its context.
Incentives:
The introduction of a universal “e-recycling” logo and “e-bins” will inspire manufacturers and designers to develop electronics which are more “e-recycle” friendly. It will also inspire environmentally friendly buyers to choose products that have the official “e-recycling” symbol.
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2nd Place Winner
“Private E-Waste Bin”
ampm studios
Derry, New Hampshire, USA
Design Team: Neha Attawar, Evan Pennella,
Ashley Morelli
Project Summary:
The private bin acts as a temporary plastic-recyclable unit that can be set up at any curb and be picked up. These bins are purchased at various convenience, drug and hardware stores. Because general use of e-waste is infrequent compared to plastic or paper recycling, these units are constructed as either temporary or permanent fixtures. A spring provides the main structure of the bin and is threaded through a Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric. The bin can be compressed and fastened for future use as well as just recycled.
Jury Comments:
“The Private E-Waste Bin was exciting as a complete re-thinking of the problem – we don’t have a communal bin at all, we have an occasional personal need, addressed with this storable vessel. While this is obviously a familiar form, it was the novel approach to the solution that was so appealing”.
-Victoria Milne
“We selected this project because we liked that it was a small-scale bin that would fit in most New York City apartments; by becoming a ubiquitous household product, perhaps it can bring “mass awareness” to e-cycling. Whereas other bins were for sidewalks or inside of a doorman building, this suggests a solution for a typical single family house in Queens or a downtown tenement building.”
-Aki Ishida
