The IDDS summits were designed to bring together many skilled individuals, usually working in the fields of design, technology, engineering, education, and social work in an active ,"think-tank" styled event to address a global problem and design a prototype to solve it. In the IDDS "Zero Waste", more than 60 international participants joined together for 15 days to co-design solutions in order to reduce solid waste pollution by generating a low-cost, technology-based prototype.

The IDDS philosophy is "less papers, more prototypes", sounds easy but it can be a real challenge when trying to put it into practice. During the summit, each group had to let go of their "paperful", standard, proceduralized ways and use the IDDS design methodology to visit points of interest such as universities, laboratories, recycling warehouses and processing companies. Each group defined and drafted their idea, built and tested their prototypes until the final product could be constructed.

In our team we faced the challenge of converting bottles made of PET plastic into material for 3D printing; we developed the first low-cost prototype to generate recycled 3D filament.

This summit was organized by C-Innova, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Universidad del Valle, the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and the Mayor's Office and local government in Cali, Colombia.