Focusing on environmental and pollution issues, our group topic is reducing waste made from nicotine products. This includes items that deliver substances through cigarettes, e-cigarettes, vaporizers, and pods.
Our project utilizes the critical-making process and gamification to tackle our social issue.
Prototype Aim
Our aim for this project was to control how people dispose of nicotine products to reduce environmental waste and pollution. Our objective was to create a sustainable and accessible solution that allows our users to access safe ways to dispose of items easily. Our goal was to also educate our users about the harmful effects of littering and the consumption of nicotine products. The main task our users needed to accomplish was the ability to understand where and how to correctly dispose of products.
Social Issue
Our social issue of concern is environmental waste and pollution. We’re trying to tackle the amount of waste created by nicotine products, in particular cigarette-related items. Our bins, will collect the waste in one location, reducing the waste left on the ground. This will not phase out the littering of nicotine products, but it will be able to educate our users about its purpose. By having strategic placement of our waste bins within the correct demographic will increase the positive effect we intend on creating.
Materials for Prototype
To produce our prototype we had access to a variety of tools. Our materials and things used were divided into 3 categories… We had tools, paper/cardboard and stickers
Producing our Prototype
Making our waste bin, we used card stock, an old cardboard box, tape, construction paper and pens and markers.
For making our legend, and digital elements we used Canva, a digital platform.
We used an old cardboard box as an outline/guidelines for the card stock, to make two more bins. Construction paper was used to make our facts sheet and labels. We used double sided tape to piece it all together.
Final Product
Challenges
We experienced a few minor technical challenges when developing our prototype. We forgot to fully consider what parts people will throw away, we forgot an e-waste section in our box.
We would’ve liked to have put more thought into how the gamification aspect of our design would work, and how that can improve the amount of waste.
Reactions
Our audience reacted well. They asked if our prototype was to scale of the final product, which it wasn’t. and they suggested we could incorporate this idea with food waste from large companies.
“It can help reduce the amount of waste, and reduce the affects of climate change.”
– Dr. Stephen Fernandez, Lecturer, Wilfrid Laurier University
Megan McMullen 
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