CleanSlate

Meet the team

We are a team of 3 designers who are inspired to tackle the overlooked yet poignant issue of e-waste, as we increasingly live in a society surrounded by personal devices and gadgets. 🤖🤖🤖

Team members: Sheryl Ang (Design), Tan Seiyee (Design), Edmund Zhang (Design)

Problem statement

On average, each Singaporean generates 73 mobile phones worth of e-waste a year, which translates to 60,000 tonnes of e-waste generated annually. The government has launched multiple initiatives to combat this, such as rolling out as much as 500 e-waste recycling bins nationwide under the E-Waste Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Scheme. However, only 5.5% of e-waste is recycled so far. This goal is far from Singapore’s collection target of 20% for e-waste recycling, posing a looming threat to our primary landfill that is anticipated to reach full capacity in 2035.

We decided to focus on the problem of recycling personal gadgets (laptops, mobile phones, personal devices). Despite their ubiquity and rapid growth as a segment of e-waste, these devices are not recycled as often as they should be. While youths are generally aware of the need for recycling, our survey findings revealed that ~60% of them choose to hoard their personal devices instead due to data privacy concerns (e.g. financial information, identity theft, personal photos and videos). How might we then make it more assuring and easier for people to erase their personal data on their devices, so they would be more inclined to recycle them?

Proposed solution

We envision a user-friendly web app that provides people guidance on erasing personal data on their devices in an simple and assuring way. This could include suggesting best practices for data erasure, and recommending relevant recycling avenues based on their needs. By lowering the barrier of data erasure, we aim for people to be more inclined to recycle their personal devices.