Through R.I.D (Recycling Identifying Device), Cohda Design aims to empower users to a greater recycling knowledge by reducing the amount of recyclable material going to landfill. It’s a common one that even most diligent recyclers get confused over whether an item can be recycled or not, this is due to the changing guidelines imposed by waste organizations. This can result in confusion where consumer will attempt to recycle non-recyclable items making waste processors even worse or consumer will dispose of a recyclable item onto general household waste leading to landfill and ultimately into the oceans.

For this project, Cohda Design has explored capabilities of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to identify waste packaging materials at home. The result is R.I.D concept that is simple to use device with NIR spectroscopy that is able to identify appropriate recyclable and non-recyclable materials. This concept device helps to direct us to a more circular economy that doesn’t need much changes to existing processes and infrastructure. User can simply hold R.I.D against waste packaging to start the identifying process from a stored database of “digital fingerprints”, it’ll indicate to the user through illumination and haptic feedback whether that waste can be recycled or not.

R.I.D uses an R.F.I.D card supplied by local council, it can be updated with regional data just in case the guidelines change. This technology allows R.I.D to become accessible to all computer competency levels without the need for smartphone apps or internet connection.

Tuvie received “R.I.D (Recycling Identification Device)” project from our ‘Submit A Design‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their design/concept for publication.