"ErgoService Bin"
[CHALLENGE]
Excerpt from Amber Wang’s “Better Bin NYC”
The standard city basket, which has held the same design since the 1930s, is composed of a metal-wire construction which is often easy for residents to misuse, frequently accessible to rats, often overflowing with garbage, and stationed at 23,250 locations across New York City. While these devices clearly exist as a historic staple within the urban design of the city, they lack a sense of responsiveness to the ever-evolving waste management problems the city expects to face in the coming future. The “Better Bin Competition”, hosted by New York City’s Department of Sanitation, offered designers the opportunity to envision a new litter-basket that could ultimately improve the quality of life for New Yorkers, especially the experience of the sanitation workers who interact with them on a daily-basis.
[Focus]
The goal of our team’s entry into this design competition was to conduct a four-week sprint that could propose a new design that was more sustainable, environmentally conscious, and ergonomic than its predecessor. Our approach centered on create a unique form-factor which addressed more modern sanitation concerns, provided ergonomic features for easy emptying, and would be cheaper to manufacture.
[METRICS]
Beyond our team’s personal endeavors for this project’s final output, The Department of Sanitation outlined base requirements for any new design proposal to be eligible for entry into the competition. These included, but were not limited to, the following considerations:
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Cost less than $175 per unit to produce with a service cycle of 2,500 uses.
Constructed of fully-recyclable materials.
A base-weight less than 32 lbs.
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The ability to be spotted from at-least 20 feet away.
A primary and secondary grip to allow for ease-of-use by sanitation workers.
Provide drainage to anticipate weather-induced flooding that also reduces rat activity.
[Preliminary research]
Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, photo: Robin Holland
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In discovering the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whose artistry looked to advocate and elevate the experience of New York’s sanitation workers, we found a creative approach that inspired us to center the product experience around the people that would be servicing them on a daily-basis. This interest of centralizing our concept around the theme of “service” directly influenced our brand and visual design language. By extension, the choice of this theme heavily informed our desire to create a highly-functional form-factor that could reduce the physical strain that emptying traditional waste-bins required without disrupting the task-flow of sanitation workers; essentially creating a way to appreciate a sector of essential workers who are rarely recognized despite being ranked as the 5th “Most Dangerous Job in the US” (2019).
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In reviewing several current approaches to waste-management, we found additional interest in the construction of residential, suburban trash-cans; these light-weight bins provide easy maneuverability through their inherent ability to be tilted both forward or backward to fairly acute angles. Furthermore, the hinges placed on the lid of these products allow for workers to use this “lip” for quick and precise emptying into trucks.
Building off this form study and looking for material choices that aligned with the 0x30 Zero Waste Initiative, we explored how we could abstract these features into a unique design that could also be mass-produced through rotational molding.
[Descriptive ReSEARCH]
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Since one of our team-members was located in New York City, they were able to relay pertinent contextual information that helped inform our primary research process. To further inform our design decisions, which were driven by an intent to be responsive to experience of sanitation workers, the remote portion of our team compensated by immersing ourselves in online media that could help provide any notable aspects of their daily routine.
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The experience of NY sanitation workers mostly includes transportation via garbage truck to sites where workers are expected to service anywhere from 200-350 baskets per shift. This action requires workers to quickly dismount from the truck and often drag a full-liter basket 10-15 feet so that it can be emptied.
These baskets require a combination of pulling and carrying to transport to the truck hopper; beyond physical fitness and dexterity, workers receive extensive training on the proper lifting techniques to avoid the strain or tear that could come from trying to quickly service so many baskets over multiple, consecutive shifts.
This observed combination of motions, specific to the design of the NYC waste baskets, looked to leverage the handles around the top-ring of the receptacle while hitting the bottom-ring to help dislodge the contents into the back of the trash-truck.
[Key Insight]
As a part of their regular servicing routine, workers strike the top-ring of these metal bins against the truck hopper. While this quick interaction helps workers quickly rely on the basket’s “mouth” serving as a tipping point against the back of the truck’s opening, this repeated action is the most common issue for damage to the receptacle. This deformation of the basket is referred to as “mushrooming” and can cause failure in the welds along the mesh of the waste-bin. Awareness of this detriment to the basket’s overall life-cycle provided an opportunity for our concept to be better suited to endure this action while endeavoring to make this repeated action even easier for sanitation workers who want to “stay in rhythm” during their routes.
[Proposed Concept]
With respect to our original goals, the ergoService Bin provided an overall weight of 24 pounds which consisted of 8 lbs of ASTM A1011 low-carbon steel and 16 lb of PVC (Type 1) to assemble a physical form which possessed several critical points to better accommodate the repetitive flow of movement that sanitations routinely undergo to empty traditional waste-baskets:
The main-form of a roto-molded plastic is held within a durable metal frame which not only provides weight to the bin but an additional set of handles at the base of the design to provide multi-sided gripping. These handles connect to a circular metal base which allows the sanitation worker to grasp and transport the bin to their truck from all sides of the bin. Upon reaching the truck, this product is outfitted with ribs that slightly protrude out from the exterior of the basket. This, in conjunction with the protruding lip at the top of the basket, are intended to help serve as pivot-points to encourage the tipping motion sanitation workers perform to help empty the container. As observed with residential trash-cans of similar material, the more elastic quality for these PVC-constructed receptacles would allow for instances where the can must be struck against the rim of the truck’s hopper with the ability to absorb the force of the impact with less deformation to the weld-points noted in the previous design. The metal base of these containers would provide a drainage grate and point to apply force if necessary to help dislodge content though their primary design intent was to decrease the concern for flooding – likely induced by rainy weather – while providing little space for rodents to enter into the container.
In allowing our design to center around the sanitation workers experience, we were also able to identify materials that provided both ecological and economic superiority. As a completely recyclable module, the full manufacturing and assembly of this product was estimated at $128 USD.
[Post-Project REFLECTION]
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The design choices and projected estimates relevant to our final output were informed by CES software, Xometry Design Guide: Sheet Metal Fabrication Plug-in for SolidWorks, and IPD Product Costing Guidelines. While under the constraints of 4-weeks, these tools provided a fair projection of what cost and profit margins could be achieved by pursuing our design. However, with little context to the specific industry-standard tools DSNY might actually use, these values should be considered strongly speculative.
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Since little information was provided about the supply-chain currently used to manufacture and deliver DSNY’s current waste-basket, the ease upon which this department could pivot to adopt processes like rotational molding are unknown.
If given more time to prototype and access our primary user-group, it’d have been important to further study how we could activate the current anthropometric needs of sanitation workers through participant observation, body-storming, and/or hands-on testing of a “works like” prototype that could validate the features of our proposed design.
