The National Winner of the 2019 James Dyson Award in Korea goes to a team of five students (Inha Cha, Dasom Choi, Doheon Kim, Sojeong Yun, Dasol Hong and Professor. Samgmin Bae) from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology for their invention “Reuse-it” – a device that makes Post-its with scrap paper!
The James Dyson Award focuses on selecting projects that “solve everyday problems”, ones that have applicable objectives for both the environment and society based on originality, creativity, and sustainable engineering. The competition was first launched in 2004 as an international student design contest designed to encourage students to design products that could solve problems and inspire next-generation engineers.
Reuse-it solves the problem of paper waste in offices, it is creative and there’s no product like it on the market so the team that created it was awarded for their innovation.
Inha Cha, one of the students on the team said:
James Dyson Award grants young designers with the rare opportunity to show and change the world with their inventions and prototypes. It was a priceless journey for us and we feel blessed to be selected as the national winner. Scarp paper wastage is a worldwide problem that is easily overlooked. We believe that “Reuse-it” has global competitiveness as well as an optimistic possibility to become productized in the future.
The average office worker in Korea uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year, with 45% of that getting thrown away usually within a day. Approximately 270,000 trees every year are used to make all this wasted paper! By using Reuse-it, all those sheets of paper get a second life – they can be turned into Post-its. Reuse-it was created to help solve the paper wastage problems with a fun and easy way by providing users with a new experience of reusing scrap paper. By keeping the paper in use, less new paper needs to be used and less trees need to be cut down.
- A piece of scrap paper has a blank side.
- A post-it can only be used on one side, the front side (because the glue is on the back.)
- Reuse-it makes it possible to recycle the scrap paper by turning the blank side of it into the front usable side of a Post-it.
The Process
- The process of how the device works is divided into two steps – the cutting then the gluing.
- When the paper is inserted and the button pushed down, first the blade cuts the scrap paper into a square shape.
- Then the blade stops, but the button continues to press further down the paper that has been cut which opens the cover of the glue (located under the cut paper).
- Lastly, the cut paper touches the glue and a spring connected to the glue cover moves the paper back to the location where the user inserted the paper in the first place.
- The glue cartridge can be refilled when empty.
Reuse-it is portable and easy to use. It can be used by anyone, anywhere and it naturally increases the awareness of the world’s paper waste issue. It changes the behavior of throwing the scrap papers away to the behavior of saving them.
The team’s current goal is to continue developing its latest prototype to final production. Things such as exterior design, blade material, and perfecting the glue to be strong enough to attach and easily re-attach are all still being fine-tuned.
