Formative assessment marked the halfway point through my senior capstone. I had ideas about what I needed to design—waste collection bins, behavior incentives, a collection management system—but I needed specifics.

Formative assessment: Does litter sorting method impact sorting accuracy?
Countries like Germany and the Netherlands are renowned as some of the most eco-friendly countries in the world. This is in part due to their complex waste management systems. While the United States does not have a system this complex, many cities nationwide offer some combination of recycling, compost, trash, and bulk waste collection, but waste sorting is not as simple as it may seem.

Sorting accuracy is a huge issue for waste processing plants, and cross-contamination of categories can render entire bins unable to be processed. So how do we enable users to sort their trash accurately? The answer may lie in the method used to sort litter.