"Dunk Ya Junk" | We want to make cleaning the environment fun!

What is the problem you found?

How might we protect our environment to create a better future for us all?

Customer / Problem

When you walk around a school you are guaranteed to see a piece of litter on the floor or in the drain. Students are clearly not interested in using the bins. Dunk Ya Junk is aimed to be used in both Primary and Secondary schools to encourage use of bins in the school community. We want to change the attitudes students have towards putting rubbish in the bin by gamifying the process.

When asking the students in our school to rate how clean our school is on a scale of 1-10, the majority said two. Litter in our school environment is an evident issue, with rubbish scattered predominantly in eating areas, waterways/drains and bushes. We want to improve the quality of student life by cleaning the environment we are learning and socialising in. Approximately 10 million tonnes of litter can be found in oceans and seas each year, worldwide, with 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. 

 

What Is Your Solution?

We have proposed a multi pronged approach to get the whole school community involved. We are going to have a competition to create a jingle to be used as our new school bell. It will have a link to our environmental initiative which is to "Dunk Ya Junk." We are going to create a basket ball hoop and backboard device that can be implemented on our bins in our eating areas. Essentially we hope to make a game out of putting your rubbish in the bin.  

We went through many ideas and did research by surveying students of our schools, teachers and the financial manager and conducted competitor analysis of existing products, and came up with ‘Dunk Ya Junk’! There were many mini basketball hoops but nothing that has been specific to reducing waste or that was scalable and adaptable. We are going to place basket ball hoops and backboards on our bins in our eating areas. Everyone loves competitions, and it’s a really fun idea to get our whole school community involved in picking up their rubbish, so we can protect our earth from further damage and create a stronger and better environment for future generations. 

Our prototype depicts a wire ring, attached to a piece of cardboard that is adjustable to each bin by the pliable plastic sheet, attached to the bin by clips. These parts are representative of the basketball hoop, plastic bags recycled and compressed to make the backboard and tyres to make the boards adjustable to various bin sizes. It accurately resembles a basketball hoop, interactive and relevant with current trends. Basketball has gained a lot of popularity among students, with the premier of ‘The Last Dance’ documentary and the impact of Kobe Bryant, creating relevance of our product and interest among the younger generation.

We plan to recycle materials such as tyres and plastics to create a durable backboard. As our coordinator of the ‘War on Waste’ club, Natalie Behl has suggested that sanitising with paper towels is here to stay, so we should start small. We aim to attach our Dunk Ya Junk hoops to fogo bins for the paper towel to be disposed of properly. After gaining evidence of experience within our own school we intend to introduce Dunk Ya Junk to neighbouring primary schools such as St Paul’s Primary School and see whether it appeals to a younger audience. We hope to attract investors such as Shellharbour City Council, Hawks Basketball and get donations through fundraising and sponsorships to start up our brand. Success will be visible by seeing the difference within our school eating areas. There will be less litter on the ground and in the drains, leading to less endangerment for wildlife.

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Advice

We'd love to have more opinions and advice to better our concept.