Hana Bank stuffed pillows with shredded won so Koreans could sleep on wealth.

South Korea destroys hundreds of millions of unfit banknotes a year, and none of it is recycled — a waste problem with no obvious use. The standard approach would be to recycle the notes as paper and run an eco campaign nobody notices.

the.WATERMELON turned the waste into a desirable product: a 'Money Dream' pillow whose filling is ground banknote waste blended with eco-material, using about 5 million won in notes per pillow.

The cleverness is attaching it to a belief people already hold: sleeping on money invites wealth. So the product is wanted for what it symbolizes, and the recycling happens as a side effect of that want rather than as a duty.

This reversed the normal logic — instead of nudging people to recycle more waste, the campaign created demand for the waste, which meant more discarded banknotes would be recycled without anyone feeling they were doing a chore.