In my research, I realized that most large scale product solutions weren't working on campus: we had infographics about composting, an online training game incoming students were required to complete, and various other technologies implemented on campus that had minimal influence on students. So, material conditions didn't have quite the expected impact. I then began interviewing students, and I quickly realized that the perception of others had a major impact on whether students composted or not. Students reported feeling as if Stanford has a cultural emphasis on compost, so that when they didn't properly manage their waste in front of others, they felt more feelings of guilt than they would if they were alone (in the dorms, for example, many people reported not composting at all). Composting, in a way, was a form of social currency, where students felt more inclined to compost when they'd gain the social approval of others.

My focus, then, shifted to how could we create a composting system on campus that would leverage this social influence even when students were alone, to incite them to compost more.

The first solution, and easiest to implement, is an inter-dorm competition. On campus, we have various inter-dorm competitions, and I've noticed people who care about winning become very concerned with how their dormmates are/aren't contributing to winning, and often attempt to convince others to participate. Therefore, creating an inter-dorm composting competition where each dorm's composting to landfill ratio was tracked (RA's already track waste output, so this would be reasonable) would likely incentivize people to contribute positively to their dorm's composting.

The second solution would be to create intra-dorm accountability pairs. Each dorm room would be paired with another dorm room, and they would be required to report their waste management within their dorm room to their accountability pair. This would artificially create feelings of perception about one' waste management, as even though they're currently in their room alone, they'd have to report their actions at the end of the month. I felt, though, that it would be important that it is a peer within their dorm, rather than a figure of authority, to maximize the social-currency aspect of it.

Finally, I designed a social token-system. This is an app all students would be on, where they could report their composting behavior. For example, when they throw out a bag into the larger composting bins, they could snap a photo, upload it, and gain a token in return. These tokens could translate to dining dollars, small prizes, etc. Furthermore, their points are tracked on a leaderboard across campus, along with a leaderboard between friends (similar to how the NYT games creates leaderboards between friends).