A grim corner of overflowing containers becomes Geri Dön — a clean, shaded recycling point that sorts five streams, teaches why it matters, and rewards the people who use it right. Geri dön: Turkish for come back — and the root of geri dönüşüm, to recycle.
Walk through almost any İstanbul neighbourhood and you'll find it: a cluster of containers, lids open, bags piled beside them. Cats tear the bags looking for food. The bins overfill. When the truck comes, what doesn't make it in is left where it falls — and what's left on the street stays on the street.
Nobody designed this corner. It was just where the bins ended up. And because it looks like a dump, people treat it like one — one careless bag invites the next.
The opposite is also true. Make the same corner clear, clean and a little dignified, and people meet it halfway. That is the whole bet of this project: behaviour follows the space.
None of this is high-tech. It's a canopy, five clearly-marked bins, a wall that explains itself, and a reason to bother. The design does the persuading.
Five colour-coded streams with big, obvious symbols — plastic, metal, glass, paper, organic. Designed so getting it right is the easy, default choice.
A light canopy keeps rain off and the corner tidy. A small, dignified shelter for the strays that already live here — so the cats stop tearing bags open.
A plain-language panel: what each stream becomes, what one wrong bag costs, and the carbon saved by sorting at home. The corner explains itself.
Sort it right, earn a stamp. Fill a card, trade it for a coupon at a shop on the same street. Doing it properly quietly pays off.
Local shops fund the coupons, a nearby school adopts the wall, residents keep an eye on it. It belongs to them — which is why it lasts.
It isn't a bin. It's a small, daily piece of civic education that pays the neighbourhood back for taking part.
The money never leaves the street. Residents earn it, local shops honour it, and the shops and belediye keep the spot running — a loop the community funds itself.
Drop each item in its proper stream.
A punch-card now; a quick QR scan later.
Small wins add up over the week.
Redeem for a coupon at a shop on the street.
They fund the next round — and it begins again.
The educational panel isn't a poster nobody reads. It's four plain truths, big enough to catch while you drop a bottle:
One bag of mixed waste can spoil a whole bin of clean recycling.
A bottle sorted right is back on a shelf in weeks. In landfill, it stays for centuries.
Separating at home is the cheapest carbon saving a household has — it costs nothing but a second.
Kept separate, food scraps become compost, not methane.
No hidden numbers. This is a buildable estimate for one corner — the figure we'd put in front of a mahalle or a belediye.
A real range: ₺52,000–68,000 depending on the corner. Reward coupons are funded by local shops, not this budget.
And what we'd actually record, the same way every time:
Geri Dön is ready to pilot. If your mahalle or belediye has a bin corner that bothers you, that's where it begins.
Bring Geri Dön to your street