OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT
This project was instrumental in designing the Frugal Futures of Bengaluru. At the heart of the conservation debate, how does one resolve in finding ways in which one can progress, make people’s lives better, innovate without destroying the planet and its limited resources around us? How do we ensure that the planet earth stays for generations together? The way to resolve such questions is to bet on finding innovative ways of ensuring development without ruining our planet. The answer might just lie in frugal innovations.
Frugality in this project is not the colloquial “jugaad” that we hear often, rather a principle that governs every action towards creating, preserving, minimising and at the same time optimally utilising resources in a given context.
By understanding the length and breadth of frugality in this project, I looked at how cigarette butts possess a problem of waste in our city and how we can tackle the current situation. As reported by Times of India in 2015, Bengaluru alone produces 31 lakhs cigarette butts everyday and are lying on the ground everywhere as well as mixed with the dry waste in Bangalore. One used cigarette butt has the capacity to pollute 50 liters of water. They are made of cellulose acetate, a plastic like material and not cotton. Takes upto 15-20 years to degenerate and contains harmful carcinogenic substances.
The Design challenge addressed in this project was, how might we collect and recycle cigarette butts at scale in Bangalore?
OUTPUTS AND OUTCOMES
The problem invariably trickled into many layers and had to be addressed through systemic approaches by creating an ecosystem of collecting and recycling cigarette butts in Bengaluru. The proposed solution was also a Private-Public Partnership model, where each of the stakeholders addresses the problems existing in the system. The Bengaluru government has to intervene at the awareness and collection level by facilitating and supporting a mechanism to collect the cigarette butts. The private players have an important role to play in the recycling of the butts, they could resort to making cellulose acetate sheets for use in different industries from the cigarette butts and not taking from the cotton linters and natural plants. The role of the cigarette companies in this endeavour is key, they can support the drive with investment and funding from their CSR profit proceeds.
All the layers have been addressed in this project by focusing on how the BBMP or even the Government of Karnataka can make dustbins for the butts while employing awareness and behavioural change mechanisms. Several methods of collecting the cigarette were proposed through products such as interactive kiosk bins, making a sustainable packaging of the cigarettes that come with an in-built metallic strip to douse the cigarette and a segment to insert the cigarette butts after use. The local shop facilitating the collection can be incentivised by converting them into open smoking zones rather than banning smoking in public entirely.
In an experiment the butts were recycled to paper sheets, with enough research it can be converted into raw materials while addressing the larger “What-If”, a sustainable frugal method.
What if cellulose acetate sheets were made of cigarette butts instead of wood pulp (trees) and cotton linters (Cotton)?
1.
Resorting to popular methods such as card-sorting, product semantics, persona building and journey of a cigarette butt from buying till it lands on the muck was followed through for the primary research.
2.
A make-shift dustbin was placed in many locations to collect the cigarette butts and see how people react to the idea.
3.
Rapid interview and testing was done through comic strips and paper prototypes.
4.
Paper-prototypes were created with new insights and behavioural nudges from the research.
5.
Collecting the cigarette butts and recycling in a partner lab called Workbench Project fueled my process of converting, cleaning and experimenting with cigarette butts into paper.
6.
Using many theoretical resources from Richard Thaler’s behavioural economics to adaptation of a new learning model called the “Conscious Competence” in psychology developed by Martine M. Broadwell acted as the science behind my projects.
7.
Brainstorming, insights map, prototyping with rapid iterations also constituted the research process.
APPROACHES AND METHODS
Cracking on the dustbins, collection strategy through behavioural changes and recycling required both primary and secondary research along with hands-on making and recycling of cigarette butts. Processes of cigarette butts are illustrated as the followings: