Speculative design of a trash can that processes and compresses plastic waste into cubes that will be sent to factories that manufacture recycled plastic building blocks.
TRASHure is a plastic processing bin that segregates and crushes plastics into compact blocks in real time, showing users immediate results to encourage responsible waste segregation and disposal, to promote a recycling and subsequently, a circular economy. The plastic blocks crushed in the bin are collected every night to undergo further processing at a factory to be converted into building blocks that are good for construction.
The initial concept took the 'circular economy' concept very literally: the trash can was to process both single and multi-use plastics and produce an output (Eg: A fan) based on the type of plastic. I realized that even though this is a hypothetical project, this may be taking it a bit too far. Also, the article given out would probably go back into the bin anyway, defeating the purpose and leading to an endless cycle.
The final output seemed a little more realistic. We had also tested scale and context of the product using Augmented Reality. Scroll down to see more!
