Every day we are confronted with choices about where to dispose of the waste our lives produce. Trashy Behavior has sought to both improve our decision making around trash disposal as well as prompt a conversation that leads to decrease waste production in general. Through design interventions such as the trash display in Chauhaus shown above as well as small messages strategically placed around Gund Hall I set out to shift behavior at the GSD. On Friday, November 16th together with several volunteers from the GSD community I conducted a waste audit to see what improvements we were able to make. Since the last wast audit in 2010, we saw significant increases in both composting and recycling accuracy (more of our compostable/recyclable materials were actually getting composted/recycled).

The lessons I have taken from this work have inspired me to look at more trashy behavior, particularly in the built environment. With upwards of 100 million tons of construction and demolition waste ending up in landfills every year, there is a significant opportunity to improve design and access to information. I plan to work on solving at least one small part of this challenge as I move forward.

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