Recycling Should Be Fun

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The home design store Kop & Kande on Bangs Torv in Herlev by Copenhagen has a box for collecting used batteries. When a battery is put into the box, it rolls over a metal xylophone, which plays a merry fanfare as the battery makes its way into the recycling circuit. In addition, each battery that is dropped into the recycled box gives the shopper a store discount. The initiative springs from the research project DAIM at The Danish Design School.

By Mads Nygaard Folkmann

The battery box in Kop & Kande is an experiment, a prototype and a practical design solution. In its design, which features Plexiglas, a mechanically produced jingle, and visible electronics, it is still far from being matured as a finished product. Nevertheless, it is in full use, and shoppers who drop off batteries get a receipt that shows the store discount – one percent per battery up to 10 percent.

Transparency. Shop manager Allan Asanovski from Kop & Kande demonstrates how all the batteries are collected, and how the user must push the green button to print the discount receipt. Photo: Mads Nygaard Folkmann

The battery cycle. The collection of batteries is promoted by a box that can be assembled from a sheet of cardboard available in the store. The box can feature either a brown monkey or a pink hippopotamus. Photo: Mads Nygaard Folkmann

Recycling begins at home. The cardboard battery container in place in the utility room. The monkey is intended to remind children where discarded batteries belong. Photo: Mads Nygaard Folkmann

Design Research Behind the Box

Part of the background for the box is the research project DAIM, which had as one of its goals to find the best way of involving ­users in recycling waste. In collaboration with Herlev Municipality and the waste management company Vestforbrænding, the key was to discover how to include shops as active participants in waste handling and recycling.

In the DAIM project, researchers interviewed customers and shop staff and held a series of workshops about the development of future scenarios – all in order to learn about user preferences and behaviour and to discover how this knowledge can translate into concrete practical solutions.

Children Are the Future

Translating research-based insights into concrete solutions also requires real-world testing. Kop og Kande in Herlev rose to the challenge and launched a discount scheme to promote the project.
“The collection of batteries is clearly focused on children,” says shop manager Allan Asanovski from Kop & Kande.
“My motivation for joining this project was to teach kids in particular to protect the environment. We must always focus on what we can do – and here, it’s important to start from the bottom up, with kids, who have not yet developed the same bad habits as the rest of us,” he explains.

The emphasis on children in the project is also reflected in a take-home battery container. The container was developed by students at The Danish Design School. It comes as a sheet of cardboard with a push-out shape that can be assembled into a box. Both sides of the sheet feature a variety of motifs, so the user can have a monkey, a hippopotamus or a robot watch over the discarded batteries. Futher, there is a version with minimalist graphics.

Both the in-store battery box and the take-home containers were developed by DAIM and the consultancy agency CIID – Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.