Brighton Council Private Environmental Project Concept University Project
Personal university project for private council concept project entry.
Brighton Beach’s Litter Problem:
Brighton Beach is a popular family and tourist destination but with this comes the issue of litter. Indeed, Brighton Beach’s litter problem has been reported on by the press on more than one occasion. Though there are plenty of bins along the seafront, the presence of litter on the beach persists.
Ana’s Research:
Brighton Council were searching for ways to encourage the public to use the bins and to make them more visible. Ana’s ‘Boat Bin’ project was conceived from research she carried out to discover why litter was appearing on the beach despite the presence of bins.
She discovered that no bins were actually available on the beach itself, only along the seafront’s pathway and that these tended to be full even before peak-time for footfall. Additionally, people Ana had questioned regarding the litter situation were of the opinion that the bins were too far away. Younger respondents stated that there was nowhere to sit and eat near a bin, unlike with parks.
The ‘Boat Bin:
Amongst other things, Brighton is famous for having many boats sitting on the beach, abandoned. Many of these boats are full of rubbish that has been dropped into them over time (for lack of actual bins, perhaps). Unfortunately, this is not a great solution as it is hard to extract the litter from some of them and tough to get inside them to clean. Seagulls tend to eat the rubbish or carry it into the sea.
Ana’s proposition was to repurpose these boats so that they could be turned into proper receptacles for waste and even converted into attractive seating areas with bins provided.
The boat aesthetic would be retained so as to keep with the seaside theme and the idea is to make disposing of one’s rubbish more fun, especially for the very young who could board the boat as ‘captain’ when putting their rubbish in the bin found on the ‘ship’.
To accommodate for the different types of rubbish (some of which can be recycled), multiple bins would be embedded into the ship design with each being clearly labelled to let the public know where to put their type of litter.
