The Diaper Disposal System Design Competition hosted on MindSumo invites innovative thinkers and designers to create practical and sustainable solutions for diaper disposal. This competition challenges participants to develop a system that tackles the common problems associated with diaper disposal, such as odor control, hygiene, and environmental impact. Diaper disposal is an everyday necessity for many families, and the competition encourages solutions that enhance convenience while being environmentally responsible.
6 months ago, we ran a different challenge on MindSumo all about regenerative hygiene and how it can make products like diapers more sustainable. As a reminder, regenerative hygiene essentially means that most or all of the materials in the products come from nature and can be returned to nature at the end of the product’s lifecycle. For this challenge, we’ll stick with the same theme but focus specifically on diapers and the disposal step to make it an easy, repeatable, and rewarding experience for users. Today, most people just throw diapers away in the trash with their other household waste, but now we are asking them to change these long-standing behaviors and do something new which may require additional effort and cost.
We need your ideas to design a disposal system/process for diapers to innovate around the real-world practicalities of
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Handling and storing quantities of diapers in the home
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Hand-over or transfer of the diapers for treatment using either a pick-up or drop-off service model
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Motivating and maintaining participation in this new behavior change
Propose a process/system that consumers could use to dispose of their diapers in a way that supports regenerative hygiene and considers the elements of handling/storage, service models and motivating participation. In your solution walk through each step of:
- Diaper storage before hand-over/transfer
- Where and how are they being stored?
- How long are the diapers being stored?
- How is odor being dealt with?
- Drop-off or Pick-up service
- How does this service work?
- How often does drop-off or pick-up happen?
- How does the service make money?
- Motivating participation
- How does the service motivate people to join and participate?
- Does the service do anything to reinforce participation?
Considerations:
- Think about your living situation and consider the following. How would this be different in apartments, single family homes or other types of housing? Urban versus rural? What if a large family was living together.
- Will a service come to their home to collect the diapers, or will they take the diapers to a collection location? Think about your answer to consideration 1 above.
- Written descriptions are great, but also consider storyboarding out the consumer experience as well.
Awards: Details about awards and prizes are available on the competition’s official page, offering incentives for top designs including cash prizes and potential commercial opportunities.
Date: 12-08-2025
