ReFILL transforms a recycling bin into a engaging and rewarding interactive experience. Created for the Vivid Sydney 2014 lights festival, it encourages festival goers to dispose their recyclables into the ReFILL interactive recycling bin.

ReFILL attempts to make recycling a fun, engaging and a rewarding experience. It's also a conscious reminder to the public of the vast number of objects we throw away on a daily basis that are completely forgotten as soon as they leave our hands. These objects do not simply just vanish but have environmental consequences long after they are binned.

The process is simple, place a recyclable object on top of the trapdoor inside the ReFILL cabinet and press the green button. A split second before the trap door opens, ReFILL takes a photo of the object and using computer vision it creates a digital snapshot of it to be added to an interactive animation projected from the ReFILL cabinet onto a nearby building. The digital objects fall down the building facade, bouncing off windows and doors using real-time physics and form a growing mound of recyclables that collect throughout the festival.

ReFILL was a collaborative project between Lukasz Karluk (software), Pete Stopniak (hardware) and Nick Clark (electronics). It was made using various technologies which include openFrameworks, OpenCV, Box2D and Arduino.

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