Students from the Social Entrepreneurship sector of Rollins College, along with Professor of Social Entrepreneurship & Business Cecilia McInnis-Bowers and Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Entrepreneurship & Business Michelle Stecker, went to the Florida Hospital for an innovation lab the weekend of April 4. On three days, different groups of students met in a “secret” location within the Florida Hospital called FFIL—Florida Hospital Innovation Lab. At this location, students spent five hours coming up with sustainable ideas of how to improve recycling on the Rollins campus.
When the process first started, students warmed up with different improv exercises to get their creative thinking flowing. Following that, students watched a short video of what FHIL does and how they encourage innovative thinking to tackle different prominent issues. Students were then split into different groups and sent off to begin their thinking of how recycling can be ameliorated on our campus. Students headed out to local restaurants, including Panera Bread and Wendy’s, to interview people on their recycling habits and what they believe the main issues are regarding why recycling is not as popular as it should be. My partner and I interviewed about five different people. We came to the conclusion that along with not being available everywhere, many people simply do not have the knowledge or motivation to recycle.
After conducting interviews, each group was instructed to find a solution for their issue and had to create a prototype that could be implemented on the Rollins campus. As a group, we narrowed down the main challenges of recycling to two and then decided on one prototype we would create to help students recycle more efficiently.
After much deliberation and collaboration, each group presented their ideas for improving recycling on campus to the other groups and proctors. From a Rollins recycling awareness day—where a large party would be hosted, including a dunk tank—to making recycling bins into basketball hoops where students gain points for different items being placed in the bins, the ideas took all shapes and forms.
Having been given the opportunity to collaborate and innovate new ideas on recycling, Rollins students came up with extraordinary ideas on how to encourage their fellow to students to recycle and create ways for recycling to become more prevalent within the community.
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