Cigarette disposal
Challenge
Redesign public cigarette disposals for use on the sidewalks of the city of Edmonton.
Outcome
Proposal designs for a cigarette disposal system which prioritizes ease of cleaning as well as increased capacity and security.
Team
Graeme Arnison
Cayley Lux
Role
User research
Concept design
Timeline
4 weeks
The challenge
As part of a class project, representatives from The City of Edmonton and the litter reduction program, Capital City Clean Up, tasked our team with redesigning public cigarette disposals that are used throughout three core business zones in the city.
Vandalism was cited as one of the main issues that the cigarette receptacles were facing.
Collecting knowledge
Through talking with the City of Edmonton representatives, we learned more about the stakeholders surrounding the disposals. This included groups such as business owners in different zones of the city, the cleaning company responsible for emptying the disposals, smokers, and non-smokers.
We needed to understand what the current state of the disposals were so our team split up and took pictures of the disposals, noted observations of their surroundings, and talked to bystanders about their experiences interacting with the disposals.
A few things stood out to us from our explorations:
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Many disposals were overflowing with large pieces of garbage and there were often cigarette butts laying on the ground around the disposal.
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Smokers weren’t able to dispose of cigarettes properly if the receptacle was overflowing with debris.
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Non-smokers liked that there was less litter but they really disliked the smell of smouldering cigarettes that often came from the disposals.
Methods
In-depth interviews / Contextual interviews / Self-ethnography
Diving deeper
We interviewed some of the reps from different business revitalization zones (BRZs) in the core of the city. These BRZs are responsible for choosing where the disposals would be installed and replacing any damaged disposals.
Again, we heard that vandalism was an issue. Vandalized units also typically led to big messes directly around the disposals.
Similar to our own observations, BRZ reps said that the disposals were filling up too quickly and were often overflowing with cigarette butts but also garbage, especially next to bars. Capacity wasn't meeting demand.
BRZs
Business Revitalization Zones are specific geographic areas of the city in which businesses pool resources and work together, through a formal association, to enhance the economic development of their area.
Our team worked with Downtown, 124th Street, and Whyte Ave BRZ reps in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
A common theme was starting to emerge ... capacity of the disposals was too limited to meet the needs of the public
Ride-along
We decided to reach out to the company (Bee Clean) who is responsible for clearing out the disposals. We managed to arrange a quick ride-along with one of the cleaners to see first hand what the cleaning process was like.
Through the ride-along, it became abundantly clear why the disposals were filling up so quickly. It also showed how vandalism played a key role in the capacity issue.
Let’s walk through the cleaning process...
A Bee Clean cleaner begins by grabbing tools from a storage unit. The equipment used was a hand held vacuum, crow bar, garbage bag, spray bottle, and cloth. All of the equipment has to be carried by hand and is very cumbersome to move around.
The cleaner starts by removing any large debris from the disposal using a crowbar.
The worker is only able to pull up a small amount of debris at a time. Furthermore, due to the awkward angle of the tool and small opening on the disposal, the worker is only able to get halfway down into the disposal.
The worker uses a vacuum to try to suck out any remaining debris from inside the disposal.
This seemed rather ineffective as well since it was very hard to create proper suction needed to pull debris up from so far down.
Using a vacuum also had the unfortunate side effect of stirring up all of the ash and debris creating a unhealthy dust cloud around the worker’s face.
Finally, the worker would spray the exterior of the disposal with cleaning solution and give it a quick wipe with a cloth before picking up his equipment and moving onto the next receptacle.
It's nearly impossible to fully clean out a disposal
Making connections
It was clear why disposals were filling up so quickly — they were rarely, if ever, being 100% cleaned out.
The worker also revealed to us that the disposals used to have a locked, trap door which made cleaning much easier. However, the lock was so weak that people would break them in order to collect half smoked cigarettes.
Therefore, the city retrofitted the trap doors by welding them shut which caused a ripple effect to occur and resulted in more litter being created.
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The ripple effect
Vandalism caused the city to weld the disposal's cleaning door shut. This made emptying the disposals extremely difficult and therefore reduced the disposals overall capacity. Reduced capacity led to overflowing disposals which resulted in more cigarette butts being thrown on the ground.
Key insights
From all of our research, we aligned on the following key insights which were then used to craft our guiding How Might We question.
How might we allow for efficient cleaning of cigarette disposals while preventing vandalism?
Ideation
We worked both as a team and individually to explore different physical forms for the redesigned disposal while keeping our list of prioritized insights top-of-mind.
Methods
Sketching / Group brainstorming / Physical prototyping
Solution
The final design concept for our cigarette disposal is focused on a removable, lockable canister mounted to a robust, sliding rail system which allows for easy cleaning while also deterring vandalism.
A small disposal opening and dual-method fastening system ensures that our disposals won’t fill up with large pieces of garbage and will mount easily to existing infrastructure.
We believe that this design thoroughly addresses the two main priorities of preventing vandalism and easing the cleaning process while also considering lower priority objectives such as increasing capacity, preventing smouldering, and reducing the need for additional cleaning equipment.
Breakdown of features
Learnings
The issue of capacity kept coming up in research and it would have been easy to assume that the solution would be to make the containers bigger. Upon further investigation, the root problem turned out to be the difficulty of cleaning that led to disposals being constantly over-capacity.
This really taught me to dig deeper into research and stakeholders rather than creating solutions to surface level problems.
I also learned how important good communication and teamwork is while working on these types of projects. Our team worked incredibly well together by balancing strengths and weaknesses, ensuring all voices were heard throughout the process, and keeping attitudes positive and professional.
Thank you
I want to acknowledge my team members, Graeme Arnison and Cayley Lux, for all of their incredible work. This is still one of my most memorable projects and a big part of that was having the chance to work with my good friends.