PROPOSAL: Three week bin system

It’s been mentioned a few times of late that we should have a three week bin system, so here’s the proposal for us to refine and hopefully vote on at the next members meeting…

Problem

People leave things laying around which aren’t Makerspace property.

Technically anything left laying about should be disposed of, but we’re decent people and don’t want to throw other people’s stuff away, but we have no process for setting a limit on how long we keep unattended items for.

Proposal

A system where smaller items are given a three week window to be claimed, or repurposed before they are disposed of.

This system should not apply to items that are too large for the bins, where we know the owner, or obviously of high personal or financial value. In these cases talking to the relevant tech, the member who it belongs to, directors or posting on Discourse would be more appropriate.

As part of the Wednesday open evening process the weekly bins are rotated:

  1. Week 3 bin is inspected for anything obviously salvageable or Makerspace property, or that should be disposed of through electrical recycling, before being put into a general waste bag.
  2. Week 2 bin is moved into the now empty week 3 bin.
  3. Week 1 bin is moved into the now empty week 2 bin.
  4. Viola!

Additionally, items in the week 2 bin may be repurposed for official Makerspace business (approved projects etc) and items in the week 3 bin may be repurposed for any personal use, so long as the items are taken off site.

2 Likes

I agree with this with only one modification needed in my opinion, if we allow people to use stuff from week 2 bin we are actually giving one week time to someone that forgot his wood there to recover it, I think is not enough , if we are allowed to take only from bin 3 then it would work!

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We could do that, my thinking was that if it was allowed to be repurposed for Makerspace use only, you could easily claim it back.

Hard to claim back a square piece of oak that now is a chisel handle! Have you any idea how much glue is needed to stick al the shavings on to make it square again? :smiley: :smiley: Hahahahha
Anyway like everything else needs refining but I second you on this!

2 Likes

If we decided to rotate bins on a monday and something gets put away on a sunday that would actually be less than 24 hours

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I’ll be honest if I found a small piece of wood laying around the space I’d throw it directly in the bin as scrap, this system would be for small items, maybe up to the size of a toaster.

I think this is a good idea, open to minor modifications, but pretty complete, thanks @unknowndomain

1 Like

I think this is a great idea - thanks @unknowndomain.
I’d agree with @stefanoromano - if it’s in week 1 or 2 bin, it’s only for collection by the owner. Anything in week 3 bin is fair game for any purpose.

The impediment to this in the past has always been…

Where will it be located?

Which we haven’t solved so far. Let’s solve that.

If we can find an easy solution, then great. If we can’t then it’s all about the value of this compared to existing space use.

Also: what size might we need? Does it need to be three bins? Maybe it’s just a few plastic crates?

We used to have the ‘table of doom’, which was a small version of this, but it took up much needed table space. It also acted as a very useful place to put all the stuff left on the ‘clear’ table. So: sometimes clearly useful gear went there if you had no idea where to put it — better than putting it in the wrong place.

Suggestions?

1 Like

As a starter for 10…

  • 3 stacking plastic boxes with lids (like the stationery box - same size)
  • label only the lids with the week number
  • stack them up - 3 at bottom, 1 on top.
  • each week, sort bin 3, and swap the lids
  • restack bins with 3 at bottom, 1 at top (now empty)

Tiny investment (unless we have crates with lids?). Stack can be moved around the clean room easily to see if we find a permanent home, and whether system gets well adopted…
If it generally works, we can think of a more robust solution.

3 Likes

I vote for this.

Let’s vote first, then solve problems about organization.

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Ikea Trofast system?

2 Likes

Even better!

I actually think a 6 week system would be fairer. Three weeks seems like a short time, especially during the summer when people could be taking two week long holidays…

Let’s face it, a three month system would be better than what we have right now.

I was thinking something like that or those stacking recycling bins:

These are another Ikea product but you can get them from other companies in clear boxes:

We could start with three weeks as the current system is zero weeks straight into the bin.

But sure if it was an issue we Couch cycle the bin only once every other week.

We could also make sure that the bag containing week three stuff is put in the bin after the waste is collected meaning it’s effectively there for a fourth week.

1 Like

Jeez!

Current system is not zero weeks it is multiple weeks as nothing gets thrown away!

Personally think 3 weeks is too short, but I do think it is a good idea

Sure, but what about my suggestions, we could start with three bins but cycle every second week?

That would save us having six boxes but also give us more time which could be enacted initially to see what works best, and then we could speed up if needs be.

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I’m totally in favour of this (personal op). The time gap is an interesting one, I would suspect it is limited by whatever vessel is actually used being filled - if there’s basically nothing in any of the bins, seems a little churlish to cycle them, but if they’re full to overflowing then one might want to cycle quicker.

This sounds in some sense like a suck it and see type experiment :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Shall we start with cycling every 2 weeks, and see how it goes? Would just need some co-ordination…