COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
WASTED Bakfiets, used to collect plastic waste in Amsterdam Noord. Image Courtesy: CITIES Foundation.
1. Address a global urban phenomenon
design and lifestyle choices that define and shape our cities.
2. Research locally and engage multiple actors
WASTED is composed of three central components:
3. Co-develop local innovation with community and professionals
1) Plastic waste collection and upcycling,
4. Implement replicable project plan locally
3) a Reward System.
5. Communicate project
In practice, local plastic is collected and reprocessed into modular blocks during workshops at WASTED’s neighbourhood plastic waste Laboratory. Blocks are then used to build new objects by and for the community, such as planters for the park; the Education Package spreads awareness on both plastic’s problems and possibilities; and the Reward System gives residents plastic coins in exchange for their plastic waste, which they can spend at participating local businesses for deals and discounts to advance a new local currency valued on waste.
There are five central pillars to CITIES’ approach:
Accordingly, WASTED’s central activities synergistically enforce aims of integrating community in giving new value to plastic waste. Beyond the community itself, WASTED strives to reduce the impacts of resource misuse involved in the production, consumption and international logistics of plastic waste management. Such lofty goals can be approached from the neighbourhood scale, which is an increasingly significant change agent within larger systems. WASTED follows this logic, seeking to provide a real-world local solution implemented at the neighbourhood level that begins to address social, environmental and economic development, as well as
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2) an Education Package, and
To raise further awareness, CITIES also implemented a Summer Program, where WASTED participated in number of local events and festivals and hosted