AWARE is a smart waste-management ecosystem designed to make recycling easier, more engaging and more rewarding.

The concept combines sensor-enabled public bins with a mobile app that helps users identify nearby disposal points, understand how to sort waste correctly, complete daily challenges and earn rewards for sustainable behaviour.

By turning waste segregation into a visible, trackable and rewarding experience, AWARE explores how technology and gamification can help build better everyday habits.

AWARE was developed around a simple challenge:

How might we make correct waste disposal easier, more visible and rewarding enough to become a habit?

The concept combines physical infrastructure with a digital experience.

Smart sensors integrated into waste bins detect and track waste activity, while the AWARE app connects users to nearby bins, provides information about disposal, records activity and translates sustainable actions into points, streaks and rewards. The system was envisioned for homes, public spaces, streets, commercial environments and other shared areas.

Instead of relying only on environmental awareness, AWARE introduces an additional behavioural incentive:

do the right thing → understand the impact → receive immediate feedback → earn something valuable.

Users can complete daily challenges, collect points, compare progress through leaderboards and redeem rewards with participating partners.

The result is a service ecosystem designed not simply to tell people to recycle better, but to make sustainable behaviour easy, understandable and worth repeating.

The Problem

Waste segregation often fails at the final moment of behaviour.

People may:

• not know which bin to use

• find sorting inconvenient

• receive little feedback after disposal

• struggle to understand their personal impact

• lack an immediate reason to change established habits

At the same time, cities and organisations need better visibility into waste streams, bin capacity and disposal behaviour.

AWARE therefore tackles the problem from both sides:

better behaviour for people + better information for waste-management systems.

The Idea

AWARE connects three layers:

1. Smart Waste Infrastructure

Sensors integrated into bins help identify and track waste activity, monitor capacity and support correct disposal. The sensor concept was designed to be adaptable to existing trash bins rather than requiring an entirely new infrastructure.

2. Mobile Experience

The app becomes the user-facing layer of the system.

Users can:

• locate nearby sensor-enabled bins

• scan and connect to bins

• receive information about waste categories

• track their activity

• complete daily and weekly challenges

• build streaks

• collect points

• participate in leaderboards

• redeem rewards

The wireframes and user flow in the project show the experience moving from onboarding and scanning through maps, learning, history and rewards.

3. Reward Ecosystem

Sustainable actions generate points that can be exchanged through participating partners.

This creates value not only for users, but potentially for retailers, organisations and municipalities that want to encourage sustainable behaviour while connecting with environmentally conscious communities.