Functional Design for Everyday Life
The design of these very different recycling container is the result of a developing process with focus on peoples needs and experiences in their everyday life recycling. It started with many talks with recycling ambitious persons on the spot in recycling stations, in their garbage rooms and outside at their waste bin. On an early stage we knew it can be hard to fit in all recycling fractions you are expected to collect. To then carry all the fractions away can also be messy, especially if you have a bit of a distance with many doors and stairs to the collection point. And when you finally got there it is also often a sticky and unpleasant business to empty them.
So with this knowledges in mind we started to look around on the market and it was soon obvious no one really had taken care of much outside the kitchen door, to carry away many fractions at the same time, to duly empty kitchen sorting bins without become sticky. A couple of years later and after additional interviews with more than 700 persons during different stages of the development we now have a line of recycling containers that is meant to make everyday recycling easier, quicker and more hygienic. They take a clear stand for sustainability and recycling. Everyone who sees them out in the streets can see the message on each side:
The normal when it comes to design of products that are for garbage seems to be to hide away and make them as invisible as possible. Our aim has been the opposite, to make them very visible, giving them a very own expression that can stand out and be displayed for the world: “-this is about garbage and we take good care of it”.