Day 9: Why does trade look like trash?

Observation: Donation or fair trade support bins are often placed near bins. In fact, they often look like one too.

One of the major issues for not for profits (NFPs) is the cost of disposing of all the rubbish and un-salable items that are placed in bins, as recently reported for donations to disaster-stricken Tokyo. This is a cost that directly reduces the positive impact of these activities. If it is a $1 per day to feed a child...and a dollar a bag to dispose of rubbish, a rough guess of 5 children don't get fed per load.

Yes, there are practicalities such as theft, commercial abuse and handling to consider, but there are opportunities too.

Opportunities:

- Start a premium donation service. It is clean, nowhere near the bins, easily accessible and really clearly branded. There are simple, positive messages to get people to do the right thing re. donations and maybe even a tracking service for people to see (roughly) where their donations end up. Potentially could work with a retailer.

- Start another tier of waste management. There is clearly a tier of waste that is perceived as too useful or too good / expensive for people to throw away that is not being addressed right now. This could be pitched as a business idea by a council, with a small grant to some bright local business students for a trial.

- Do away with bins altogether and do a deal with mail providers to ship the donations.

- Build a global street-swap party idea. It already exists as clothes swaps, car-boot sales and charity shops. Why not make it local and have one huge central table down the street, a bit of a party and a $2 donation to participate - both donating and being able to select items to take away or 'swap'.

Sounds like fun to me... :)