Posters: Sustainable Refrainables

From Sustainable Refrainables, the 2nd Core77 Design Arena Community Challenge: a poster design competition celebrating words of persuasion.

First World Problems

Many industrial designers tend to focus on "first world problems", considering these trivial inconveniences among the privileged as design problems requiring design solutions. Come on, visit the third world one day...

We-Bike: pedal-power for laptops

http://wewatt.be/index.html

PSS: Social bicycles

http://socialbicycles.com/

PSS: Toiletry refill stations

In the 1990s customers who bought bottled shampoo and conditioner at the Body Shop had the incentive of refilling those bottles in the shop, for less dollars because of the savings from reusing packaging. There were 900 Body Shop "refill bars" in 40 countries. However in 2002 this PSS was discontinued due to only 1% of customers participating.

The Enticements Soap Shop of Norwood in Adelaide allows customers to refill their own bottles.

In 2010 The Refill Shoppe in California revived the idea of consumer refilling of shampoo, conditioner, window cleaner, laundry detergent and other products.

In 2012 Use Me Products started their Filling Station in Maine where salon customers can refill their empty bottles of cleansers and moisturizers.

PSS: Fabric softener refill stations

Eziserv in-store dispensing systems for fabric softener are available in ASDA chain supermarkets in the UK and at Carrefour Shanghai. Their self-dispensing machines and specially designed 10x refillable pouches have received the "Innovation of the Year" honours during the 2010 UK Packaging Awards. However in 2012 the ASDA supermarket chain admitted that their trial was disappointing, as consumers rarely used the pouches more than 2x. The biggest barriers to mass consumer adoption are "inconvenience, mess and cost".

KegMama also had a concept for refillable pouches to be refilled at in-store dispensers.

Ecover of Belgium continues to offer their container refill service in independent health food stores and local cooperative shops. Washing up detergents, fabric conditioner, laundry detergent and multi-surface cleaner are available for refilling.

Sun and Earth Cleaner Living also has gravity-fed refill stations for laundry detergent and fabric softeners in various cooperative stores around the USA.

Staedtler Lumocolor park+write refill station

The Staedtler Lumocolor park + write set is fixed to the whiteboard and makes it easy for users to "park" their whiteboard markers for refilling by capillary action, thereby avoiding the waste resulting from dried up markers.