DELTAP is a joint faculty research group from the TU Delft, searching for an integrative approach for smart small-scale piped water supplies in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta in Bangladesh and India.
A part of the project, conducted by PHD candidate Prarthana Majumdar, is searching for products which solve water and hygiene related problems. Her project focusses on products based on local materials which can be made DIY by the local inhabitants. One of the sub-topics is creating products with plastic waste. For that reason, DELTAP collaborates with Precious Plastic, a company focussing on local, small scale, plastic recycling.

This topic is converted into this graduation project. The products, designed during this graduation, will be used as DIY templates for others to replicate and used by Prarthana for further research.

To narrow down this project, the Karail slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was chosen as research area. From here on, the next assignment was created:

Design one or more products from recycled plastic for water and hygiene use in the Karail slum to create awareness and acceptance of recycled plastic. The products should be easy to make to enable local DIY production, in this case with the Precious Plastic techniques.

The project was divided in three main phases: the analysis, field research and product development.

In the analysis the Precious Plastic machines were used for tinkering to understand the opportunities of recycled plastic with the machines. Many samples were created which were used in the field research to test the acceptance of recycled plastics.
Secondly, the analyses phase did also include a literature research on waste, water and hygiene in Bangladesh, Dhaka and Karail slum.

With the analysis a strong foundation was built to prepare the field research. With informal observations, semi-structured interviews and focus group sessions, a part of the Opportunity Detection Kit a toolkit of the Capability Driven Design method by Annemarie Mink, was used.

From the field research around 15 product directions were created. After assessing them with a criteria list and rating them on the importance for the DELTAP project, two product directions were chosen and elaborated in the last phase:

Lid
The Karail slum dwellers do use aluminium pots to store their water. However, a proper lid is not available, resulting in the usage of plates, cups or wooden plates. Therefor a plastic lid, of recycled plastic is designed. The mould for the lid is easy to create with the tools and materials available in the slum. Also, it is possible to create the lid in the preferred colours, texture and style found during the field research.

Water filter
The slum dwellers do sometimes boil their water and then filter the dirt with a piece of cloth or a sieve. This water filter can easily be placed on the pot to filter the water. The filter can be created with meeting the same requirements as the lid.

The products will be used as template for researching DIY production in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta.