The lid

My main concern at the moment is deciding how people will use the bin. How will the user physically get their food waste into it? This interaction will be critical to the project so right now i’m focusing on that and what it could be. Not just from an engineering ‘how will this work’ point of view but from a designers’ point of view – how/what will it communicate to the user. The aim is to create something that will be able to instantly convey what the project is about to someone who has no background knowledge of it.
As per the advice given to me at my mark 1 presentation I’ve been taking my ideas to the extreme in search for inspiration. Looking into how you might seal something whilst simultaneously communicating this fact. A few thoughts I’ve been having on the very general ‘sealed things’ have been; welding, rivets, clasps, safes, combination locks, post boxes, plastic packaging and even ideas such as meshes or grills so that anything going into the bin would have to be cut into tiny pieces or liquidised. Whilst these are pretty ridiculous it’s a starting point from where more sane ideas could be worked out.
I quite like the comparison with a post box as it’s an object which almost everyone is familiar with and its also universally understood that you are able to put things in but nothing can be taken out.