The Problem: Many people put the wrong rubbish in bins, leading to low recycling rates
The Solution: Smiling and talking bins.
There has been growing publicity about the problems of waste over the past few years and the importance of increasing recycling rates to reduce the impact around the world, most visibly from plastic in the oceans.
One of the problems is that many people don’t put the correct waste into the correct bins, which leads to recyclable items being sent to landfill or incineration; either because recyclable waste is put in general waste bins, or non-recyclable waste is put in recycling bins and 'contaminates' the bin so that it can no longer be recycled.
There are many potential solutions to this problem, some of which should be structural; for example all public and household bins should have the same rules as to what can and cannot be recycled, so only one message needs to be conveyed to people. This would also make it easy to put a symbol on packaging saying which bin it had to go in.
Something that’s a bit more fun and visible is to create talking bins, which speak to the person who puts rubbish in them. Such bins would have an in-built camera and use image recognition and artificial intelligence software to identify the item of rubbish and determine if it should go into the bin or not, and then play some audio and a visual smile or frown to the person who put the waste in the bin.
The idea takes inspiration from the smiley face speed monitors on roadsides which have been shown to be more effective than speed cameras at reducing speeding.
The bins would have an additional advantage, in that the technology needed for them would be useful in waste and recycling plants to identify waste and separate it out, helping improve recycling rates, and could also be developed to create larger public bins that would take all waste in one hole, but accurately sift it into relevant sections of the bin to be taken away and recycled or disposed of.
Tests would need to be run on what audio works best, for example negative comments when the incorrect waste was placed in a bin might incentivise people to put the wrong waste in a bin just to hear the response.
An extension of this idea would be to have a siren sound with a bright flashing red light if someone placed the wrong item in a bin, to get people to think carefully about which bin they placed waste in to avoid embarrassment, however that idea focuses too much on punishing bad behaviour rather than rewarding good behaviour.
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