UCD students win third prize at Smarter Travel Student Awards

Isn’t it fascinating to learn where clever ideas come from?

While working in a Dublin off-licence, UCD City Planning and Environmental Policy student Maksim Solodovnikov noticed how people would feed their used drinks bottles and cans into the reverse vending machine (RVM), collect the receipts and use the money to buy sweets or alcohol.

“I thought a simple repurposing of this machine would be to install an NFC reader for a Leap card. So then people could directly top up their Leap cards and save money on public transport instead.”

Under the guidance of their Smart Cities professor Francesco Pilla, Maksim and his classmates Emma Michejda, Iakov Lagutin and Gabriela Orjuela-Dorado set about developing this simple, innovative idea.

Their resulting Plastic-to-Travel RVM won third place in the recent Engineering and Innovation National Transport Authority Smarter Travel Student Awards.

Congratulations to these UCD Sustainability 'Future Leaders' on a great idea to promote sustainable mobility!