1. Sustainable Design Eliminating Waste Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life of the environment, make amends if you do. —Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. 1994
5. Design to aid recycling Reversing planned obsolescence & consumer culture
6. Design to aid recycling Reversing planned obsolescence & consumer culture Designing viable, attractive alternatives to help people lead sustainable lifestyles
9. human-powered, does not use fuel does not produce noise or air pollution during use viable option for short journeys eases traffic congestion uses less material in production than other common modes of transportation very accessible , in terms of cost and ease of use The Bicycle & Cycling versatile a sustainable way of keeping fit user has high degree of control on where he wants to go and on speed easily customizable to fit different people and needs can be shared
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14. study traffic flows within campus, outside campus (campus users’ traffic flow, hotspots, etc.) understand campus users’ sentiments towards transportation on campus opportunities for bicycles as a mode of transportation demand for bicycles as a mode of transportation
This is a diagram showing the various levels of intervention in waste management. For the bottom 2 levels, I disregarded them completely because they are steps to manage waste AFTER the waste has been generated. Recycling, which is the next level up, was my very first focus in this whole project. I wanted to design receptacles that could help people to recycle more conveniently. But the more I read about waste minimization, the more realised that recycling has its pitfalls, and if I really want to do something to minimize waste, this is not the stage to come in at. So, I went further up the pyramid. I ignored reuse, because that is just an overworked topic, and concentrated on minimisation. I wanted to design objects would last longer in consumers’ homes due to some kind of greater attachment. OR make consumers more aware of the waste they generate, and hence, influence them in consuming more conscientiously. But at this stage, I realised that not everyone is actively concerned about WASTE per se, people just don’t want to have to deal with waste in any way. So, I moved up the pyramid to waste prevention! And this is where I decided to design to give people alternative products or ways of doing things, that are simple sustainable in nature, and leave it to people to choose whether they would like to take up these option. The problem at this stage for me, was to decide what problem or context exactly I want to design for.
So, I decided to look at myself and my own experiences to identify interesting problems to tackle. And came up with the idea of a sustainable campus.
I chose to go with the bicycle rental system because, conceptually it ties in very much with my idea to give people an alternative whereby they are not forced to use the product because they are concerned about sustainability, but for lots of other reasons. But the fact that cycling is a sustainable mode of transportation and that it produces less waste than other modes of transportation is implicit.
To elaborate: These are some of the advantages of using bicycles, and also some considerations of how the bicycle does not consume as much resources as other forms of transport do. I’ll be leveraging on some of these advantages in my project.
Currently, there are some universities around the world that do have bicycle renting systems in place, but these have varying degrees of success, and because of many factors that differ from campus to campus. So, there is potential to explore how a successful bicycle rental system can be developed for the NTU campus.
So far, these are some factors that I have considered, and there are many possibilities to design the infrastructure and system around these factors.
study traffic flows – campus users such as students and staffunderstanding user sentiments – mainly though surveys, look out for gaps that cycling can fill