Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that have the potential to make the biggest difference to our lives. Dutch product design firm, Waarmakers, have done just that with their blindingly obvious, but potentially revolutionary, transparent recycling bag they call the Goedzak. Not many of us would be willing to suffer the indignity of rooting through bin bags in search of a hidden gem but by making the recycling bag transparent, a good few of us would be prepared to pick out something they wanted from the Goedzac as they walked down the street.
A second life: While Freecycle has promoted the idea of giving a second life to the contents of homes that would otherwise be heading for the rubbish heap, the Goedzak presents a more effortless, opportunistic form of recycling. Humans Invent spoke to co-founder of Waarmakers, Maarten Heijltjes, to find out how they came up with the concept. He says, “The question at the start of the process was, can we design something that would stimulate altruism in people? From this starting point it was a long process. Goedzak was one of the things to come out of it, and the best one in our opinion.”
The prototype: Buoyed by winning second prize for Goedzak at Dutch Design Week in 2010, Heijltjes began to develop the prototype, though there were some initial set backs. He says, “What we found over the last few years is that it’s very hard to make it commercially viable. People like the idea and want to be part of it, but who’s going to pay for it and whose going to pick up the bags? The legislation on waste in the Netherlands is pretty strict and it differs in each municipality.” To combat this issue they have partnered up with a chain of second hand stores to do a pilot scheme, which is soon to go ahead. “The ideal way is to have the process as sustainable as possible and so in this scenario, they’ll pick it up, sell whatever is useful and separate into garbage whatever is not. The second hand stores will be the ones who do the production of the bags, we’re behind it but they will supply them.”
Sustainable goal: But even before the pilot scheme goes ahead, there are already signs that this will be a success, as exemplified by a rather peculiar incident involving an opportunist thief who appeared on the scene during a photoshoot of the Goedzag bag on the streets of Amsterdam. Heijltjes explains, “It was a weird moment. We see this guy ride up, and we were poking each other saying, ‘look at that guy, he’s getting it, he’s slowing down, he is looking at the bag.’ This is an unknown concept but the guy gets it.”
