While there are many types of environmental problems, landfills are one of the most difficult to fix. Landfills are unpopular; no one wants to have them near. At the same time, the amount of garbage produced by the average American home continues to grow. The State of Washington's Department of Ecology notes that in 2005, the average household contributed as much as 7.9 pounds of waste per person per day. Amounts aside, there are other, more tragic concerns with landfills.
A concept is putting life into product. So product
has its story by people. We defined four main
keywords which were “Precious object”, Getting
soul”, “The life span” and “Inheriting the story”. 
To develop our concept, we arranged several interview with a few people. We conducted interview with five subjects - a handmade product, a living product, an electronic product, a plastic box and a cloth.
According to the interview, overall, interviewees were interested in getting the product identifi cation, recycleing methods and history.
Especially, they wanted to know how to handle the product when it no longer can be used and has to be recycled. So informing people about how to recycle is useful. And they said the approach of saving energy in the concept is very emotional. They helped us generate new ideas for the concept.
Here is the system for the concept. A company starts to produce a product with a tag that contains an identification of the product. The product goes to a market via monitoring agency that supervises if the product has right identification. In the market, user can check the identification. When user deos buy the product, the story of the product starts with the user.While user has the product, he can share the information- product stroy, recycling method and so on- with the others online. When the product is end, user judge if it is recycable by the story of the product.
This is a mobile service which lets people get
the story of the product they own. The people
who have the service can get information about
where/when the product was made from “My birth and Childhood” page. And they can search
and share new recycling methods in the “Rein-
carnation will” page.
Demonstrating assumption of the concept by testing potential users with the prototype is one of main processes to improve the concept. So we made a prototype with mini-monitor and barcode sensor to show people how it worked. We tested the prototype with five people in different disciplines to obtain various feedback from them.
The procedure of the user test was divided into three main steps to make people understand the ALP service. The three main steps were showing ALP teaser, demonstrating a way of getting the story from the product and then showing the contents of the ALP service.
Three out of five interviewees appreciated the contents of the ALP service. The others had also positive opinions. Particularly the “Reincarnation will” part was quite acceptable for them to learn the recycling way. But they agreed that the story part, where people can share their stories, is not essential in the ALP service.
Story of Felix is a teaser to attract people to use ALP service. It is about normal life of Felix, which is one of recycable box. The teaser tells people Felix is usually trashed out in land fill by people, so that it is very wasteful. Accordingly if you use ALP service, you can give more life to Felix and reduce waste.