01I got waste
AU has a Foundation Program, split into studios. In the Environment & Climate Change one, each of us was handed a real problem to think about.
Mine was waste. More specifically: why most people still don't segregate it.
02We've been running the same ad for years
Think about how we usually talk about it. What happens if you don't. The landfills. The guilt. Years of it.
And it hasn't really worked. Everyone agrees we should. Almost nobody does.
So I flipped the question. What happens if you do?
Not only for the planet. For you. Something you can feel, in your pocket, on your way to work.
03How it works
You segregate your waste and document it. That earns you credits. The credits pay for your bus or metro ride.
- sort your waste
- snap a photo
- AI checks it
- Leaf Credits
- bus & metro rides
- data on which incentives actually work
04Where the money doesn't come from
This is the part I find most interesting, and it's the part nobody sees.
The obvious way to pay people for good behaviour is a new subsidy. Which means a city finding new cash, every month, more or less forever.
But waste management and public transport already sit under the same roof: the municipality. So the credits don't need new money. They move from one wing to the other, internally. Same result, no cash burned.
And every credit spent puts one more person on public transport, which quietly helps the air too.
two problems, one budget.05Pride, and then data
Then there's the leaderboard. Wards compete for the cleanest, best-segregated spot in the city, and there's a very particular kind of pride in getting your area to number one.
And underneath all of it, the city learns something it usually has to guess: which incentives change behaviour, and which wards actually show up.
that last box is the sneaky-interesting part.