Maybe we shall see one installed next to each cof­fee-blender. Ah… and what is this ‘Bing Bin’ that rec­og­nizes your wastes and sorts them accord­ing­ly? It is a futur­ist, eco­log­i­cal project that won the French edi­tion of this year’s James Dyson Award (Sept.2018)

In the begin­ning, there was this CC enti­tled, “Ini­ti­a­tion for the cre­ation and man­age­ment of inno­v­a­tive enter­pris­es”, fol­lowed by Tyn­giun Du and Saad Lach­hab, very keen on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment ques­tions. These two UTC stu­dents start­ed out on an ambi­tious project: to rev­o­lu­tion­ize waste man­age­ment by sort­ing and com­press­ing them from the moment they are dis­card­ed and dropped in a bin. In Sep­tem­ber 2017, they won an ‘inno­v­a­tive project’ com­pe­ti­tion orga­nized by the region­al depart­ment DIDT (Inno­va­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Devel­op­ment), which enabled them to ben­e­fit from accom­pa­ni­ment via the DPIE (entre­pre­neur­ial aids for inno­v­a­tive projects). “The DIDT has, at its dis­pos­al, a wide-rang­ing set of aids to help stu­dent-entre­pre­neurs”, explains Vir­ginie Lamarche, her­self an engi­neer in charge of this incen­tive entre­pre­neur­ial arrange­ment. “The aid can take the form of finance, co-work­ing space assign­ments, access to the Fab’Lab, con­tacts and liai­son with UTC lab­o­ra­to­ries … The stu­dents select­ed are accom­pa­nied from the ear­ly project stages up to and includ­ing point of sale intro­duc­tion of their product(s)!”

In 2018 anoth­er stu­dent, Yuchen Qiu, joined the team who were ready­ing them­selves for the James Dyson Award com­pe­ti­tion, sup­port­ed in this by the IDI spe­cial­ty staff (indus­tri­al design engi­neer­ing). “In accom­pa­ny­ing our stu­dents through this com­pe­ti­tion, we help them in fact to pre­pare them­selves bet­ter for a future pro­fes­sion, giv­en that calls to ten­der and com­pe­ti­tions are part and par­cel of any design engineer’s work”, explains Emmanuel Cor­bas­son, head of IDI. And as has been the case since 2013, this Bing Bin project was ranked final­ist, “because our stu­dents”, under­scores Emmanuel, “ben­e­fit from a spe­cif­ic accom­pa­ni­ment and because we teach them how to address user-can­tered prob­lems”. So what will hap­pen now? Tyn­giun has grad­u­at­ed from UTC and has returned to Chi­na. But she def­i­nite­ly does not wish to aban­don the Bing Bin project. Fol­low­ing Saad’s depar­ture too, Julie Schwarz joined the team to pur­sue the devel­op­ment of Bing Bin, again with sup­port from the DIDT. This is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for her. “Since I joined the project, I have been in charge of prod­uct design aspects, with liai­son work among col­leagues here and all our exter­nal PR “comm” work … a rea chal­lenge for me!: 

The fact that Tyn­giun is now back in Chi­na is not seen as prob­lem­at­ic for her: « On the con­trary, it turns out to be an advan­tage! The R&D aspects and mar­ket-stud­ies are car­ried out in France, so my role will be to con­tact Chi­nese sup­pli­ers to make sure that the parts we buy here are of suit­able qual­i­ty. Work­ing between France and Chi­na is nev­er straight­for­ward, but we are con­vinced that it will prove to be an advan­tage in the long term!”

How does the Bing Bin it work?

1. 1 The user dis­cards waste item(s)
2. 2 The Bing Bin pho­tographs and iden­ti­fies items: can, plas­tic bot­tle, gob­let, etc. (organ­ic wastes are not tak­en in to account)
3. 3 Weighty sen­sors detect if any liq­uids remain (if so, the user must emp­ty them into a spe­cial recipient). 
4. 4 The waste items are then com­pressed and dis­patched to a com­part­ment spe­cif­ic to the cat­e­go­ry of waste.

Entrepreneurship at UTC

• • The com­pe­ti­tion for inno­v­a­tive projects (launched in 2010): 8 start-ups created
• • 8 start-ups accom­pa­nied out­with then competition
• • The Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Acad­e­my: 4 projects 
• ranked in the “top ten” over the past three year peri­od the “Elite” entre­pre­neur­ship pro­gramme: 10–15 stu­dents each year, 7 start-ups created