Redefining Recycling for People at Home
As people become more aware of environmental issues, more individuals are seeking ways to contribute to sustainability. However, many face difficulties in handling and disposing of recyclables due to a lack of convenient services. CarbonLoop addresses this gap by offering a platform where users can schedule pickups for their recyclables, ensuring they are properly processed.
CarbonLoop’s mission is to help households achieve greater sustainability by reinventing the way residents recycle plastic, glass and aluminum beverage containers, along with cardboard boxes.
Role: User Experience and Product Designer. I conducted extensive field research about recycling, built prototypes, pitch decks and collaborated with developers to build an app.
Tools and Tasks: Adobe XD, Photoshop, user interviews, competitive research, technology research, prototyping and usability testing.
Challenge: Make recycling more understandable and accessible to residents.
Outcome: A product that educated residents about the benefits of recycling and allow them to recycle more effectively from home.
Duration: 3 months
Who we built this for
We initially wanted to target users who are eco-conscious individuals, deeply concerned about the environment and are eager to adopt sustainable practices to help protect the planet. Then we shifted our sights to those who might not be able to recycle or may not even be aware of these other options to help the planet.
Our goal then became to spread information about recycling and make it more accessible to those who want to contribute to the efforts of creating a healthier environment.
We wanted to find out if providing the resources necessary to recycling more effectively will encourage and enable those who want to reduce their carbon footprint to recycle more.
User Research – Dumpster-diving for information
Our goal was to understand user behaviors, observe any operational bottlenecks and assess overall customer satisfaction so we spent two afternoons at visiting local recycling facilities. These insights informed the content we created for our app and website.
Additionall, we wanted to see how much recyclables were being moved throughout peak hours to get an idea of how lucrative the process of recycling could be.
Patrons typically arrived with carloads of plastic PET bottles and aluminum cans. We observed that, although recycling glass bottles was the most financially rewarding, it posed significant challenges in transportation for return.
We asked some of the patrons as they waited in line to see if they understood the process of recycling. Though, most had a good concept of recycling and spoke generally about the benefits it had toward the planet, some had more questions than answers.
Some of them asked:
- “Where does it actually go?”
- “What happens from here?”
- “How has by contribution affected the world around me?”
Synthesizing – Sorting through our research
These individuals faced several frustrations with traditional recycling methods:
- Time Consumption: The entire process, from sorting to transporting recyclables, consumes a significant amount of time and effort.
- Weather: Inclement weather conditions can make the trip to recycling facilities even more unpleasant and difficult.
- Unsanitary Conditions: Poor hygiene and cleanliness at some recycling facilities deter users.
- Complexity: Many feel bewildered by the complicated recycling standards and procedures.
- Negative Interactions: Encounters with rude staff or patrons at recycling centers can be discouraging.
Even if users were to opt to recycling from home, they faced difficulties understanding how. Different materials have specific recycling rules, and these can vary by region. This complexity can be overwhelming. Recycling guidelines can change, and information from different sources might be contradictory.
Competitive Research
We identified the biggest competitor in this market was municipal or private services that collect recyclables directly from households. These are usually subscribed services attached to services required by the city in order to occupy a home.
This came up a lot in our interviews because it’s the default method of recycling for most home owners. They chose this method because they were already paying for it as part of their cost of living in their homes. But varying standards and little enforcement of properly separating materials cause low-quality goods that eventually get processed the same as garbage, never making it through the recycling process.
Market Strategy – How we’ll trash the competition
The biggest competitive advantage we had over the municipal services, was transparency and education. While most municipal services claim they take care of the recyclables in a responsible manner, it’s often combined with regular waste if the recyclables have been contaminated.
This was because of the often confusing or contradicting instructions provided by the services. There is a huge degree in what is acceptable to put into the common blue recycling bin and what needs to be discarded as regular waste. And it’s often not so clear.
This confusion is the leading cause to why the quality of recyclables have been compromised, leading to other global economic issues.
Recycling no longer a waste of time…
As many ways there are to preserve our planet’s health, it may be difficult to understand how effective our efforts are.
People are left to accept that their efforts can only take the so far and its soon out of their control after a certain point.
So we came up with some solutions to help them not only help them in their efforts of recycling, but reward them with education and incentives as well.
- Learning – They could read about how to more effectively recycle or about alternative ways they can help preserve their community and planet.
- Assured – They could be assured that their efforts are making an impact by seeing how their efforts are calculated into measurable actions and diverting waste from landfills.
- Incentives – They can exchange their credits gift cards and other eco-friendly goods.
- Scheduled pickups – Users can arrange their recyclables to be picked up and exchanged for CRV where eligible.
- Tracking – They can stay updated on their redemptions and transactions.
Building an MVP
Equipped with a better understanding of what users were most frustrated with and some ideas, we built a mid-fi prototype that we published on Apple’s TestFlight so that we can beta test and observe our users. We focused on:
- Onboarding – promoting aspects of our product to educate them on how to use it.
- Signup – collecting necessary information about the user.
- Scheduling – creating the process we can use to test and observe.
Onboarding
We wanted to introduce users to the app and show how they’d benefit from using it. Our onboarding concept was designed to motivate them to reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to environmental conservation efforts and develop a habit.
The message we wanted to get across to them is that it’s easy and rewarding.
Signing Up
After users go through the introduction, they’ll be prompted to set up their account. We wanted to make the app quick to access and browse before giving them more instruction to minimize drop-off. Users would be able to access information with minimal friction. This effort was to improve adherence, allowing them to be able to still tour the app and access other features such as news articles.
Scheduling Pickups
We built this flow to resemble something our users might already be familiar with, ordering delivery. Similarly to comparable apps like DoorDash or Uber Eats, we have a menu and checkout process.
Tracking was also being developed to help our users stay up-to-date about the process of their recyclables. After our drivers picked up the recyclables, it would be inputted into our system so that we could provide the users some visibility to stay informed about where it’s going.
Being Agile, Being Iterative
In an agile environment, we were able to learn and iterate quickly as we continued to develop our ideas. With our working prototype, we were able to conduct several rounds of moderated and unmoderated testing and take the feedback and further iterate on our initial designs.
Moderated testing allowed us to discover more about the experiences our users had with our app as well as their own previous experiences recycling. We learned about
Future Features and Further Considerations
From our moderated testing and further research, we came up with some other ways our users could use our platform.
Pay it forward
We considered how we could partner with local charities and school programs to so our users could use our platform help our their immediate community as well, not just planet.
Instead of claiming their refunds for themselves, they could automate the proceeds toward another cause.
More accessible instructions
To make sure our users were able to feel confident and properly recycle, we shot some concept videos to demonstrate the appropriate steps to recycle. In addition to the video, we considered implementing voice over audio as well as captioning.
This was in efforts to assure high quality recyclables being put through our system and assure our users that they are recycling accordingly.
Extended services
As part of our efforts to serve our users, we considered extending our services to pick up cardboard as well.
Because of eCommerce, the most popular materials residences recycled was actually cardboard. We didn’t want to let this go un-addressed, so we developed ideas to accommodate this need.
Conclusion
Being one of the founding members of this product allowed me to think holistically about how my skills as a designer could shape the future of this product.
During this project, I got to work very closely with developers and engineers to figure out how these solutions would be created. It was thrilling to see these ideas come to life as we learned more and more about how we could contribute to creating a better planet we can all live on.
