Students behind better waste sorting

Asmus Gram-Hansen and Niels Besser Mortensen, who are both Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) students, are well underway with their final project, but hopefully the product they have developed will soon become a permanent fixture at major DTU events.

In collaboration with DTU’s Campus Service, they have designed a cardboard lid that can be placed on top of small wheeled containers that can hold up to 140 litres of waste. The cardboard lid has been tested at two of the largest annual events at DTU, the Open House and the DSE job and career fair.

“We (Niels Besser Mortensen, Asmus Gram-Hansen, and DTU Campus Service, Ed.) have compared photos of waste from the two events with photos of waste from previous years, and there is no doubt that our solution increases the quality of the waste. It has simply been sorted significantly better, and that is hugely positive,” says Niels Besser Mortensen.

Asmus Gram-Hansen continues:

“It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get all visitors at an event to sort waste one hundred per cent correctly, so that has never been our goal. But it was clear from the two test events that the lid makes people stop and consider before throwing their waste into the various containers. And just making people more aware of waste sorting is important in itself.”

The cardboard lid is very light and easy to stack, and it comes in different colours depending on the waste type. The colours are also identical to the national pictogram system used by Danish municipalities for waste sorting, which helps event participants find the right container for their waste faster.

“Our design plays on recognizability, and to that end we have also developed some specially designed pictograms in collaboration with DTU Campus Service that depict the kind of waste typically produced at large events. One of them is the disposable cardboard mug, which very often ends up in the plastic or paper container, even though it is actually residual waste,” explains Asmus Gram-Hansen.