Improving Harvard recycling

I was a project manager for my junior thesis design course (Spring 2020). Our team was approached by Harvard Waste Management to develop improvements for recycling at Harvard. In the past decade, cardboard recycling had increased dramatically on Harvard campus, and were increasingly found in trash cans rather than recycling bins. I led a team of 5 other classmates in developing several upgrades to the physical recycling process at Harvard, including my own proposal to use QR and RFID tags for tracking cardboard boxes and increasing data about recycling at Harvard.

We spent a lot of time first defining a problem statement and understanding our client’s needs. I got much better at asking the right questions to frame the client’s problems and thinking critically about our proposed solutions through this process. Harvard Waste Management was really satisfied by some of the ideas that we proposed, and will be trying to implement them in the future.