Humanising Trash Bins
Summary
In Australia, trash-bins are color-coded. However, many wastes are incorrectly placed in the wrong bin.
During Spring 2019 Urban Prototyping Festival, I prototyped a trash bin that can recognise whether the waste is recyclable. If it's the right one, the trash bin will smile and happily eat the "food". If it's the wrong one, the trash bin will cry because of "stomachache". Here I humanised the trash bin, with the hypothesis that this could make people act more responsible when throwing waste into them. This humanisation approach has been used widely, I just took it further by making the trash bin fully alive.
Working on this project was personally satisfying, not only because it was my first experience with hardware prototyping but also because it enriched my knowledge about waste segregation. I demonstrated the prototype at the Urban Prototyping Festival 2019 at the University of Sydney and OzBerry – Sydney’s Monthly IoT Maker Space.