Every superhero needs an origins story; so do we

It all started with a very simple idea: let's make recycling easier.

All of us involved in this project are environmental politics students; one would think that we would know how to recycle, right? Wrong. Each of us still found that we don't always know which bin to put out coffee cups (that one time when we forget our keepcup), paper packaging and other ambiguous waste. So we thought: how could this be made easier? And the clearest answer was: if only the packaging was colour-coded based on the bin colours. No thinking required: just matching colour with colour.

We couldn't change the colour of the packaging on campus of course; however, we thought we might be able to go around this by creating a series of simple, colour-coded stickers. Orange sticker -> orange bin, and with space for little extra information ("wash me" and perhaps a link to our website). We talked about the idea with a few peers and they were all on board, all similarly still a little confused by what could be recycled and what couldn't.

Our aim was to target a number of specific products that were often misplaced, and create a stickering campaign based on those for Freshers' Week. We felt that if we could give people good habits from the start, they would not need the prompts after the first few weeks. We also planned on having a social media 'guerilla stickering' campaign with funny videos (we'd all need to learn to be funny, I suppose; but isn't university about learning new skills?).

We also were lucky enough to gain advice and insights from excellent people across the university about who to contact and how to assess whether the project was viable, both in general and specifically for the Clinton Global Initiative University Programme. We talked with people from the Student Association and others from the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Office. Especially the latter gave us many insights on the very practical side; they also told us to aim as high as possible and consider whether this would actually make any difference. We were recommended to take a more circular economy approach, rather than just focusing on recycling. We took this on board but at the same time were encouraged by the peer support for the idea - after all, if our mostly environmentally-conscious friends were struggling, no surprise there were issues.

Before making any final project decisions however, we felt it was important to go and see the recycling facility; after all, they would know best what are the main recycling problems and what kind of difference that would make.