“Don't Bin It, Bring It”: E-Waste Public-Service Campaign for Bengaluru Apartment Communities + Dissertation

This MFA Applied Art final project has two parts, as the display-plus-dissertation pattern of most fine-arts faculties requires. The practical part is a public-service campaign, Don't Bin It, Bring It, that persuades residents of Bengaluru apartment communities to hand over old phones, chargers, cables and small appliances at authorised e-waste collection points instead of throwing them into mixed dry waste or selling them to informal scrap buyers. The written part is a dissertation on the visual rhetoric of Indian public-service advertising — how posters, hoardings and television spots on family planning, polio, sanitation and road safety have tried to change behaviour through image, type and slogan.

The campaign is designed as a system rather than a single poster: a key visual and typographic identity, a series of four posters for apartment notice boards, two bus-shelter panels, three social-media carousels for residents' association groups, a 30-second motion spot made in After Effects, and a bin-wrap for a collection drum placed in a partner community.

Its messaging is grounded in the E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022, which make producers responsible for collection, and in the Advertising Standards Council of India's code for truthful claims. Effectiveness is checked with a simple pre/post recall and intent test among residents of a fictional partner community, Kanakapura Road's Silver Oak Residency. The display, portfolio, process document, artist statement and dissertation are presented to the final jury.

Abstract

Indian households store a surprising quantity of dead electronics — phones, chargers, remote controls, CFLs and batteries — because nobody knows where to take them. What does leave the home usually goes into mixed waste or to informal dismantlers, where burning and acid stripping harm workers and soil. This project designs a public-service campaign for Bengaluru apartment communities that makes authorised disposal visible, easy and socially rewarded, and pairs it with a dissertation examining how Indian public-service advertising has historically used imagery and language to shift everyday behaviour.

Introduction

Applied art sits between fine art and communication: the image must work as an image, but it must also make someone do something. Apartment communities are a good test audience. They are dense, have notice boards, WhatsApp groups and residents' associations, and already run dry-waste segregation, so a small behavioural nudge has a place to land.

Literature gap

Writing on Indian public-service advertising tends to be either a history of famous campaigns or a marketing case study. Few studies read these campaigns as visual rhetoric — looking at how the red triangle of family planning, the warm family imagery of polio campaigns or the stern road-safety skull actually persuade. And environmental campaigns on e-waste are rare and mostly text-heavy leaflets copied from compliance documents. The project responds on both fronts: the dissertation builds a rhetorical reading framework, and the campaign applies it.

Existing approach vs proposed approach

• Existing: text-dense leaflets listing rules; generic "Go Green" illustrations; no clear instruction on where to go; no measurement.
• Proposed: one single-minded message, a recognisable visual system, a concrete action (drop point, day, time), a friendly character-free illustrative style using everyday objects, bilingual English–Kannada typography, and a measured pre/post recall test.

Feasibility

• Technical: all artwork uses Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and After Effects available in the department lab; posters are screen-printed and digitally printed.
• Practical: the partner community allows notice-board placement for three weeks and a collection drum near the security cabin; a fictional authorised recycler partner is named only as "an authorised recycler" on the artwork.
• Ethical: the survey is anonymous, voluntary and collects no names or phone numbers.

Most apartment residents in Bengaluru segregate wet and dry waste but have no habit for electronic waste. Old devices sit in drawers for years or are dropped into dry-waste bags, where they end up with informal scrap handlers. Existing awareness material is either legal text from compliance documents or generic green imagery that says nothing about what to do next. Residents therefore know that e-waste is "bad" but not where, when or how to dispose of it.

For an applied artist, the problem is a communication problem: how can a coherent visual campaign, designed for the specific media of an apartment community, make authorised e-waste disposal memorable and actionable, and how can its effect be measured honestly? Alongside, the dissertation asks what Indian public-service advertising has learned about visual persuasion, so that the campaign rests on a considered tradition rather than on taste alone.

In scope

• Campaign strategy, identity and a complete media series for one partner apartment community.
• Print production (digital and screen print) and an After Effects motion spot.
• A three-week placement and a simple pre/post recall-and-intent questionnaire.
• A dissertation of roughly 12,000–15,000 words on visual rhetoric in Indian public-service advertising.

Out of scope

• Running an actual collection service or handling devices (the recycler partner is described generically).
• City-wide media buying or paid social promotion.
• Claims of long-term behaviour change; the test measures recall and stated intent only.

The project follows a design-research process (research → brief → concept → iterations → production → testing → display), run in parallel with dissertation writing.

Dissertation method: qualitative visual analysis of a purposive sample of public-service campaigns, using a framework drawn from classical rhetoric (ethos, pathos, logos) and semiotic reading (denotation, connotation, anchorage). Campaign test: a pre/post questionnaire measuring unaided recall of the message, knowledge of the drop point and stated intent to dispose — reported as simple percentages and change, without claiming causation.