01
Supermarkets & hypermarkets
Routine → integrate collection
People already make essential shopping trips, and stores already sell the packaging they receive from wholesalers.
Sustainability · Service design · August 2026
Second Life for Packaging
Online deliveries leave every Pune household with a steady pile of boxes, mailers and bags. People already set them aside. Almost none of it makes it to a recycler. I designed concepts for a public collection system that closes that gap.
How the work was split: the team (Vishruta Kelkar, Snehal Dusane, Diya Varshney and I) researched the problem together, then each of us took one part of the collection chain. My deep dive: the public collection centre. Everything from section 03 onwards is my individual work.
TL;DR
- Problem
- Households already set clean, dry delivery packaging aside, but most of it still ends up in the dry-waste bin instead of reaching a recycler.
- My role
- Shared research with the team, then my own deep dive into the public collection centre: 13 interviews, synthesis, the design brief, ideation and concepts.
- Key insight
- The behaviour isn’t the barrier. People don’t know where or to whom to hand packaging over, and the trip isn’t worth ₹10 a kilo.
- Outcome
- Concepts for putting collection where people already go (shops, societies, schools, their own doorstep), each explored through variations framed as testable hypotheses.
01 · The problem
The packaging is clean, dry and sorted. Then it goes in the bin.
4–7parcels per household, per week
85%of surveyed residents throw segregated packaging in the dry-waste bin (22 of 26)
~12%of India’s plastic waste is mechanically recycled Source: CSE analysis of CPCB data, via Down To Earth, Nov 2022
Pune’s system already collects and segregates waste through PMC and SWaCH. The gap is earlier: between a household that has sorted its packaging and a recycler who could use it.
02 · Research
What we found in homes and at the hub
15+ residents interviewed6 housing societies26 survey responsesSegregation hub visit
- Residents already separate wet and dry waste; delivery packaging goes into dry.
- Cardboard and kraft bags are saved for the staff to sell, then thrown out when space runs short.
- The watchman shares a kabadiwala’s number, but residents can’t see where anything goes.
- At the hub, waste is torn, sorted and stored for 15–20 days. Every handling step adds contamination.
Insight: the behaviour isn’t the barrier. People already keep packaging aside. They just need a clear reason, and a clear place, to hand it over.
03 · My deep dive
Where the chain breaks
I zoomed in on one question: what stops people from handing over packaging they’ve already sorted? 13 one-to-one interviews: 8 residents, 3 delivery partners and 2 watchmen across Kothrud, Magarpatta, Amanora and Sinhagad Road.
- Delivery arrives
- Segregate
- Store
- Hand overWhere? To whom?
- DiscardEffort > value: why travel 10 km for ₹10 a kilo?
“In our busy schedules it’s not possible to take out time and energy to go to a recycler.”
“We do store and give newspaper for recycling, but never thought of packaging waste.”
“In Ahmedabad we used to segregate, clean and give it to a recycling center…”
- Unsure what can be recycled28%
- Don’t know where to take it24%
- No nearby collection point20%
- Takes up storage space16%
- Not worth the effort8%
- No time4%
72% named a problem of knowing what or where, or reaching a drop point. Only 8% said it wasn’t worth the effort.
04 · Synthesis
Four barriers, four design moves
Design brief
How might we design a convenient public collection system that lets people deposit their already-segregated dry packaging waste, while making participation worthwhile?
05 · Ideation
10 directions, sketched as full service loops
I drew each idea as a loop from the household to the recycler, so I could see who carries the effort and who gets the value.
NGO collection centresGovernment centres for waste pickersCompany take-backSchoolsHostels & PGsParks & playgroundsSupermarketsMallsShared public binRotating weekly bin
06 · Concepts
Four concepts, each explored through variations
I framed every variation as a hypothesis, e.g. “Can recycling become the last step of a shopping trip?”, and weighed it by its opportunities and trade-offs for the user, the operator and the recycler.
02
Shared in housing societies
Individual action → collective benefit
One household struggles to justify the trip. Townships like Magarpatta and Amanora share common roads that work as a transit point.
03
Schools & colleges
Learn → practise → repeat
Young people are frequent delivery users, and habits formed early stick.
04
Company take-back
Delivery → return → reuse / recycle
The biggest barrier is the extra trip, and e-commerce platforms already have the logistics.
07 · Where it landed
Concepts to test, not one answer to polish
The brief called for concepts rather than a single final design, so I didn’t pick a winner. Each concept answers the same question differently: where should a public collection point sit so that handing packaging over takes no extra trip? Where people shop, where they live, where they learn, or at their own door. Because every variation is written as a hypothesis, the next step is a field test, not more polish.
What I’d test first
A shared station on a common road in one township such as Magarpatta, where several societies already pass the same point, run for a few weeks.
What I’d measure
Kilograms of packaging collected per society per week, the share of households that drop off at least once, and how many come back a second time.
What would change my mind
If people drop off once and stop, the payoff isn’t working, and the society-rewards variation should be tested next.
08 · Reflection
What I’d do differently
- The problem was the hand-over, not the bin.I expected a segregation problem. The interviews showed people already segregate; the chain breaks between storing packaging and handing it over. Going one level deeper than the survey changed the brief.
- Small surveys point; they don’t prove.With 26 survey responses, I treated the numbers as direction and leaned on the 13 interviews for the reasons behind them.
- Test one concept before widening.Next time I’d put a rough version of one concept in a real society early, then use what I learn to shape the variations.
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