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DTU Students Pioneering Improved Waste Sorting Methods

By iednewsdesk On May 11, 2024

Asmus Gram-Hansen and Niels Besser Mortensen, who are both Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) students, are well underway with their final project, but hopefully the product they have developed will soon become a permanent fixture at major DTU events.

In collaboration with DTU’s Campus Service, they have designed a cardboard lid that can be placed on top of small wheeled containers that can hold up to 140 litres of waste. The cardboard lid has been tested at two of the largest annual events at DTU, the Open House and the DSE job and career fair.

“We (Niels Besser Mortensen, Asmus Gram-Hansen, and DTU Campus Service, Ed.) have compared photos of waste from the two events with photos of waste from previous years, and there is no doubt that our solution increases the quality of the waste. It has simply been sorted significantly better, and that is hugely positive,” says Niels Besser Mortensen.

Asmus Gram-Hansen continues:

“It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get all visitors at an event to sort waste one hundred per cent correctly, so that has never been our goal. But it was clear from the two test events that the lid makes people stop and consider before throwing their waste into the various containers. And just making people more aware of waste sorting is important in itself.”

The cardboard lid is very light and easy to stack, and it comes in different colours depending on the waste type. The colours are also identical to the national pictogram system used by Danish municipalities for waste sorting, which helps event participants find the right container for their waste faster.

“Our design plays on recognizability, and to that end we have also developed some specially designed pictograms in collaboration with DTU Campus Service that depict the kind of waste typically produced at large events. One of them is the disposable cardboard mug, which very often ends up in the plastic or paper container, even though it is actually residual waste,” explains Asmus Gram-Hansen.

A satisfied partner

Asmus Gram-Hansen and Niels Besser Mortensen have taken over the basic design from a group of BEng students who participated in the Innovation Pilot course in summer 2023. The group developed the design as a solution to a case about better waste sorting at events that DTU Campus Service brought to the course, and Asmus Gram-Hansen and Niels Besser Mortensen have since optimized the design with colours and event-specific pictograms.

About Innovation Pilot

Innovation Pilot is an interdisciplinary and mandatory course for BEng students, where students collaborate to solve a case for a company.

Stine Rye Pedersen, Sustainability Employee at DTU Campus Service, is very satisfied with the design.

“It is a pleasure to work with Asmus and Niels to develop the product, and it is definitely not the last time we contribute with a case for the Innovation Pilot course. The students’ knowledge and creative approach is a huge resource, and they have the time to really immerse themselves in solving a problem,” she says.

Niels Besser Mortensen also knows exactly what makes the project special.

“The exciting thing about this project is that it will not just end up in a report—it will become a physical product that can be manufactured at a large scale, and which DTU Campus Service will hopefully be able to use at events for years to come. It’s not just going to be thrown away,” he explains.

The three project partners are in dialogue with a company about how the process from individual prototypes to large-scale production of the lid might look. The prototypes of the cardboard lid, which were tested at the Open House and DSE fair, are manufactured in the workshop and laboratory facilities in DesignBuildLab at Ballerup Campus.

Technical University of Denmark