Husmus recycling bins

Swedish design group Muungano have created a set of containers for collecting household recycling called Husmus (housemouse). The containers are made of offset printed recycled plastics which are held together with plastic rivets, which come flat and need assembled before use.

"Husmus is most likely the worlds best designed and perhaps most charming recycle bin system."

But don´t let their simple shape fool you, behind the form is some hardcore research in to kitchen sizes, different types of standard module’s, garbage throwing behaviour, sizes of plastics and paper bags, the weight of glass, metal, paper and so on. And I think that they are a very modern and well thought out version of the usually unsightly recycling bins or waste recepticals that we get now a days that have more thought about the exterior look and appeal than the inside and of how people will throw the rubbish in to them etc. This will be used as an insight in to my thinking behaviour for next semester ...thinking out of the box!!

PDS take 1

For this week we have been asked to make up a PDS (Product Design Specification) for our project to date. Giving insights that we have found from our research so far and what we propose to do/take from here on forward. So I am sitting just now trying to collate all of this bain of knowledge and information in to an A4 page document.

Get Your Hands Dirty

This is the mini brief that I have been given by Jon, Geoff and Sue to progress my thinking and to challenge my findings and insights further. Fir this I have been told that my research to date had revealed insights into the behaviors and attitudes of recycling. And that it was now time to “get your hands dirty”. So my mini brief was asking me to catalogue ‘waste’:
1. Using the character profiles I have developed, to analyze the ‘waste’ for 3 of the 5 profiles by carrying out a cataloguing activity.
2. Key to this activity will be the categories you create to catalogue by.

I am plodding along with this and will give you more information at a later date.

Project progressions

Things have gone a little slower since the presentations with the big guns! Since then I have progressed my project in regards to looking in to creating character profiles, looking in to their lifestyle and their surroundings to find out insights as to how it may effect the way, or the materials that they recycle. From my research and my own personal insights I have come up with five different character profiles. These are:

• The Urban Warrior
• The Family Cirlce
• The Specific Connoisseur
• The There and Then
• The Fledgling

I think that these five different categories of people describe best the different types of people who recycle.

Project Update

Well the presentations were last Thursday and everything seemed to go well, and it was nice to see what some of the others have been doing as you kind of loose track of the others as you are so focused on your own project. It was also good to get good feedback about the presentations, which bodes well for next semesters massively important presentaion of hell! More feedback will be given this week from Sue in our group session. So looking forward to gaining some insights in to where to go from here, as I only have a rough idea!

Progress Update

As you can see from my short film below I have managed to sum up some of my main information of my research so far. This film will lead nicely in to helping me establish grounds for a powerpoint for our presentations last thursday!

Recycling Film

Project Update

Ok since I last blogged I've been quite a busy bunny! I have started a map of the city centre and have located where in the city there are recycling points and recycling centres, including on-street recycling points. I have also been out and about observing users in their natural habitat when it comes to recyclng, and asking them questions about what they see are the barriers etc.

I have also been looking at my results from my survey. I was quite surprised at the amound of responses I had to the survey and the results were exactly what I was needing in regards of information and attitudes towards the different types of recycling and also the barriers.

I will have a short film which will follow which sums up some of these points.

Recycling Survey

Friday was quite an exciting day as my survey went in to the bulletin! This was a great idea, as the whole university students, lecturers and staff get it sent to them. From having my survey posted in the bulleting my responses went soaring up! I have now got 60 responses, which is more than enough to collate some findings from! I'm so happy!

And following on from having my survey in the bulletin two members of staff who deal with the recycling on campus contacted me and hopefully I am meeting with one of them today! I will update after the meeting!

More research ...

So after going through almost every book, journal and webpage that I can find, I have decided to move on to primary research. This includes things such as observing people and their recycling habbits, doing a survey and going out and speaking to people. I started this with my survey. The aim of my survey was to find out the behaviours and patterns of use of people who recycle. And from this I hope to gain enough information to help minimise the barriers that may stop or discourage people to recycle. And from this I also plan to go out to different recycling areas and talk to 10 people about things such as why they have come here today, and of how often they come.

Wall of words

As part of the start of our research our class got together and thought of words that related best to each of our projects. With these words we then took them and arranged them in to logical groupings on the wall. From these groupings of words we came up with our groups which we would work in with the lecturers. The three groups are Culture & Perceptions, Economics & Sustainability and User-centred & Lifestyle. I found this very helpful, as now I feel that I have some people to bounce ideas etc off of! Our word wall is pictured above.

Research

For the fast few weeks now I've been looking mainly at secondary research, which is basically trolling through books, journals and the web and printing off lots of information! Which seems ironic as I'm doing a project on recycling and sustainability and I'm killing lots of trees in the process. So far i've been looking in to the broader picture of recycling and sustainability.

The main areas I'm looking at are:
Legislation and regulations
A sense of recycling in the world
Community research
Current recycling schemes
Inclusive Design
Design Exclusion

Seam Chair by Chris Kabel

This 'Seam Chair' is entirely made out of polypropylene fabric. This material is cheap, non toxic and completely high-grade recyclable.

For a sustainable innovation in the future it is important that objects are made of a single material. It saves time in recycling and the material does not become conterminated. The technique as is used by Kabel saves energy and creates a lightweight material that can replace the toxic and single use thermosetting glass- and carbon fiber resin systems.

I like this design as it is showing that there are some designers out there understanding and including sustainable and recycling issues in their design processes.

Shigeru Ban

Shigeru Ban is one of the designers/artists that I am influenced by. I love the way his cardboard designs are modern but then they still have the edge of being different.

'A Drop of Water' by Van der Veer

Thousands of litres of water disappear via the rain pipe into the sewer during a rain shower. At the same time, an average household uses litres of drinking water to irrigate the garden. Bas van der Veer combined these two concepts in A drop of water: a rainwater butt with an integrated watering can. The light grey water butt is attached to the rain pipe, so during a rain shower the watering can is automatically filled. Once it is full, the rest of the water flows over into the water butt, so serving as a reservoir. “In this way, it is easier for the users to water their garden using rain water instead of drinking water from the tap.”

I like this design as it is sustainable and also helps save on resources such as water, which in some areas of the world are scarce. I also liked this as it relates to my own field of research of sustainability and recycling.

Research

Ive decided to research sustainability but more specifically recycling for my project as it seems quite a broad subject which still has quite a few routes to explore. Sustainability and recycling are current growing problems in the design world today with all of the current economic issues that are currently in the news. With in these areas I also want to look at inclusive and user centred design with regards to recycling. Hopefully this will take me somewhere exciting!