Room for change: Impact of building-level innovations to facilitate product reuse among residents
Paper in proceeding, 2017

This article explores the importance of building spaces in residential areas to encourage waste prevention through product reuse. First, a short review is made over five existing spaces that allow residents to leave and take products to be used again by others. Then, the initial experiences of establishing such a space in the HSB Living Lab in Gothenburg are presented to complement the review. In general the experiences of establishing these rooms for change are positive, with users making use of the space frequently. Aspects such as location and open hours are crucial to make the change-stations convenient for residents to use. Making the space available to a large group of people is important to ensure good product flow and renewal. Even though these spaces enable product exchange between users, it is not always possible to link this exchange to a measureable effect on reduced waste generation or consumption. It is not always true that the items exchanged would have been discarded or purchased if the space to change them was not available. There is an exception when the exchanged items are food, since the food made available for others to take would have been wasted otherwise.

Reuse

user participation.

residential infrastructure

give-away

waste prevention

Author

Isabel Ordonez Pizarro

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Design and Human Factors

Shea Hagy

Architecture and Civil Engineering

Frida Bard

Architecture and Civil Engineering

Linn Wahlgren

Chalmers, Energy and Environment

Beatrice Ringstrand

Chalmers, Energy and Environment, Energy Technology

PLATE conference, Delft University of Technology, 8-10 November 2017

Subject Categories

Educational Sciences

Infrastructure Engineering

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Building Futures (2010-2018)

DOI

10.3233/978-1-61499-820-4-324

More information

Latest update

8/21/2018