Scandinavian design is a design movement characterized by simplicity, minimalism, and functionality that emerged in the early 20th century, and subsequently flourished in the 1950s throughout the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.
Scandinavian designers are known especially for household goods including furniture, textiles, ceramics, lamps, and glass, but the Scandinavian design has been extended to industrial design such as consumer electronics, mobile phones, and cars. (Wiki,2021)
Singapore is a little dot, a small country with humid and cold weather at times. It is also a well-known country for being the cleanest and greenest city. Dustbins are placed everywhere for anyone to dispose of their rubbish easily. Making it a cultural habit in Singapore since 1958, where they held the first cleaning campaign, called “Keep Your City Clean”. These campaigns continued for years till today.
The cultural identity is whenever Singaporeans come across dustbins they have the common understanding that they are supposed to dispose of their rubbish into the dustbins, which helped Singapore to achieve the title of the greenest city. However, when the idea of changing dustbins into a recycling dustbin was introduced in 2001, where you can throw almost any rubbish into the bin to recycle it. Some still do not understand what not to throw into the bin, when the instruction has been stated on the bin.
This shows that the newly designed recycling dustbins are not helping the uses, as most of the users are used to the old habit of throwing anything into the dustbin, they would rather throw their rubbish into the green dustbins (old version) than the recycling dustbins (new version). In addition, they will continue throwing their rubbish even if it is filled to the brim, having the mentality that someone is going to clean up after them.
An example from this picture, the person who placed the cups on the recycling dustbin, could have to throw the finished drinks into the bin. However, they decide to place it on top of the dustbin and leave it be. This responding culture is not good and not successful in designing such bins. As this picture shows that they are encouraging the users to place their rubbish on the bins instead of inside the bin. It is saddening to see it happen, especially since the photo was taken along with the Singapore flag behind it.
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