Parsons School of Design
Effective Date: December 7, 2018
New Dormitory Waste System to Mitigate Incorrect Sorting
Purpose:
The average university student creates 640 pounds of solid waste each year. The New School dormitory waste system currently has issues that need to be addressed to divert this waste into the right sections. There are too few waste bins inside of the dormitory suites and those in place are very small and provide no information. Thus, the students are placing their waste mainly in the landfill instead of using the sections provided in the waste room on each floor.
Additional Authority:
Federal Department of Education in the United States of America.
Scope:
Dormitories in universities across the United States of America.
Responsible Party:
Caragh Shea, product designer of waste containers.
POLICY
- Policy Statement
In order to reduce this problem and the amount of incorrect sorting, new recycling and waste bins were created to simplify sorting for busy university students. The new bins have wheels and handles for easy disposal. There are also illustrations on the front of these bins showing items that students typically dispose of in separate colors for each section. The aim is to implement this new dorm waste system into universities across the country of the United States of America. This way, students will learn how to correctly sort their waste while they are still young. They will bring the knowledge of how to correctly sort waste with them past university and teach others to help mitigate their impacts on the wicked problem of waste in the world.
- Procedure (How to implement it)
In order to implement these new waste bins, the Federal Department of Education could create a law that by 2022 all waste systems in university dormitories across the country must use this system. These universities could recycle the metal and plastic that currently hold their waste systems and turn them into the separate parts of these new bins. Recycled plastic could create the wheels and recycled metal could create the body and handles. The bins could be implemented with corresponding sections in waste rooms on each floor or wherever they are in the dormitory buildings.
- Scope
The students in dormitories across the country would be impacted by this policy. They would be living with these new bins and using them to dispose of their waste. Inevitably even if they don’t particularly care about correct disposal of waste, they will be able to see if the item they are holding obviously should be put in one section or another. The illustrations on the front of each section are tailored to students and what they commonly dispose of based on surveys done on various New School students. The items listed at the bottom of each section are there to help with confusion and reaffirm the current knowledge some students may have about correct disposal. By teaching these students how to correctly sort their waste at this stage in their lives, they will be able to make more conscious decisions when disposing of waste and realize how simple it can be.
