Weekly 5

I spent the past weekend at the Clarke Prize Design Challenge, hosted by TROOST and the sustainability department of University of Toronto. The problem for this design challenge was to improve the sustainability of our campus, and our team approached this problem by introducing the idea of localizing paper recycling within the campus.

We utilized one of the prototypes from Epson, which could effectively recycle paper by itself, and proposed a better method to reduce contamination of recyclable paper.

Looking back at our team's presentation, improvements could be made by adding cost-benefit data with regards to the economical feasibility of our solution. I could also see improvements being made in my public speaking skills for the pitching stage of the challenge.

Overall, participating in the challenge was enjoyable as it was a good opportunity to practice generating new ideas and speaking in public in a relatively relaxed environment. But more importantly, it was our team that made the whole experience more special. Our team was quite effective in problem solving and working together, and I could see our team participating in a future competition or even something at a larger scale. By working in a competitive setting demonstrated the strengths of our team and how we interact with each other.

Thanks for reading. Happy Monday!