Chemistry

Chemistry bags national design award by rethinking ‘green’.
		In a bid to present design as a means to improve everyday objects and enhance the lives of people who use them, Singapore Design Council launched the ‘10 TouchPoints’ competition last year. The general public voted for items they thought needed a redesign and designers were invited to respond with fresh ideas and creative solutions. As passionate advocates of environmental issues, Chemistry rose to the challenge of designing a new pedestrian-based recycling bin. Early this year, they emerged the Grand Prize Winner and Category Winner of the 10 TouchPoints Design Competition.

The big idea Through brainstorming sessions and tools like experiential mapping and scenario building, the Chemistry lads identified key challenges and arrived at the conclusion that existing recycling bins were not effective at all in communicating the importance of recycling. Explains Bassam Jabry, “We decided on actually changing people’s mindset towards recycling, instead of merely presenting a new object or design. Singapore’s anti-littering campaign has been so effective in getting people to ‘just bin it’ that our challenge was to take things a step further and get them to bin their recyclables appropriately and not treat everything as just trash.”


The team came up with an evocative, larger-than-life design humorously inspired by well-recognised brands of everyday recyclable products. ‘Tiger’, ‘Seasons’ ice-lemon tea and ‘Her World’ magazine were just some of the product brands utilised in this bold, green rethink. To drive the point home, the brand names were replaced with an attention-grabbing ‘RECYCLE!’. Specific designs would be strategically positioned where members of the public could most identify with them – for example, the Her World magazine bin along the fashion belt of Orchard Road and the Absolut Vodka bottle bin in bar-saturated areas like Clarke Quay. The big win Winning top prize is one thing, but the real victory for Chemistry is bringing their idea to life at this year’s Design Festival and collaborating with various stakeholders, including the National Environment Authority That’s not all. One of the prominent members of the competition jury provided positive feedback that gave the team something to green about. Dick Powell, Founder/Director of UK design consultancy Seymour Powell, remarked, “A holistic answer which creates public interest, while still serving its utilitarian purposes of recycling. This offers real commercial opportunities for sponsorship that will help to mobilise the drive for recycling within the hearts and minds of all Singaporeans”.