Who are we?

WasteLess is a team from Digital Society School including one developer, two researchers and a Digital Transformation Designer as our coach: Youngji Cho. Our team is passionately working on the challenge of changing behavior in waste management.

Claudia Gerrits

I am a HBO-ICT Game Development student from the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. With my interest in the school, combined with my interest in sustainability this project has been an opportunity to use my development skills to improve my campus. Within these six months I’ve learned a lot about consumption habits and how to combine different fields (games and sustainability) to create a product that makes sense and hopefully will lead to behavioural change within the students. But most importantly, a product that shows the fun aspect of being sustainable.

Keisha Charles

Applying the practice from WasteLess in further waste management projects in and outside of the Netherlands is my future intention. With a background in Business Innovation, my interest lies in providing value in human centred design. Motivation to work on this project comes from the opportunity to learn, lead, execute communicable action messages which may change behavior on a community level.

Pari Pasandi

I am a masters student of economics, interested in Circular Economy. With my passion about Sustainability, finding the chance to work on a project about sustainable consumption is an enjoyable opportunity for me. During 6 months of project we did research and worked on consumption habits, waste management and ways to trigger behavioral change in this. I wish our play-box can be insightful for everyone to just think a little more about sustainability. Our everyday life is full of sustainability challenges that we can win 😉

What are we doing?

We have been thinking about a cleaner campus in the couple of last months. In the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) and Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA), research teams are working on improvement of the waste management system. How can we make improvements fundamentally and start from the behavior of students?

We have been digging deep in the problem and we found the solution more effective if it starts from the consumption habits and responsible behaviors of the students. if all of us re-think about our consumption and the waste stream that we produce regarding to that, the problem of waste management can be solved before emerging!

With our project we experimented different solutions to trigger the behavioral change in our audience and make them re-think about the issue and communicate the sustainability message. In the end we find it more effective to send the message in a fun and playful way. Our team, WasteLess, invites students to take actions while they play, challenge themselves and have fun.

Why are we doing this?

The awareness of making a sustainable Earth is very high; it had never been this high before. However, the action level of making it sustainable is low. Our goal is to trigger action in responsible consumption of waste. That involes action before creating waste (re-thinking decisions) and action when waste is already made (proper waste management).

We take our first steps in UvA and HvA campuses to make a product, tool, or strategy to change the behavior of students and staff to handle waste more sustainably. Hopefully, our final product reaches out to the broader audience to trigger their actions for making a sustainable future.

How are we doing this?

Actively working at Digital Society School in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, from February 2020, employing the Design Thinking approach.

Commissioned and partnered with Facility Services (Projectteam grondstoffenvisie) of Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) and Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA).

Find the team at

Claudia Gerrits – [Email] , [LinkedIn]

Keisha Charles –  [Email] , [LinkedIn]

Parvaneh Pasandi – [Email] , [Linkedin]

Team Wasteless (general) – [Email]