Coloured certain parts of the monster to visualise some of the data.
Changed the layout from the “monster” being in the centre to being a little out of frame to emphasize the size of the monster and also to show it coming into frame.
Tried different visuals for the bottom part of the poster.
Showed this for the first class feedback/critique session.
The final version presented in class.
Changes made:
The man’s facial expression is more cunning than the previous version
The man is seen running instead of walking to create more action
The fish food cycle is replaced with other icons
More icons added to each category to visualise the content
Changed the colour of the pie chart and outlined it to make it more obvious
No more one word lines
Changes made:
Resized the swimming pool illustration so that the overall layout can seem more circular
The monster has more blue in it for better contrast
Are the current visuals working to encourage people to recycle?
What would motivate them to recycle more/properly?
A total of 50 responses were collected and the results are presented below.
Brief summary
Most of the respondents are either too lazy, busy or find it too troublesome to recycle but the majority recycles because they care for the environment and they want to reduce waste.
Most of them know what can be thrown into recycling bins, but not all respondents know how to recycle plastic properly
Most of them are interested in guides that are informative and easy to follow
Demographics of respondents
I tried to have a mixed group of respondents from different age groups, life stage (different employment status), and the role they play in the household.
Respondent’s general recycling knowledge
Among the 16 respondents who were working, only 6 had the motivation to recycle because they cared for the environment or wanted to reduce waste. The majority of them did not recycle because they are too busy, lazy, or find it too troublesome to recycle. Some gave their own comments that they did not know how to recycle properly or there isn’t a system in place for them to recycle easily.
Although most of the respondents already have the habit of putting the right recyclables in the recycling bins, there is still a minority that thinks that fabric or unwanted items can be recycled which can increase the workload for sorting out the items in the recycling bin.
Respondent’s plastic recycling knowledge
It is good that around 80 – 90% of respondents knew that they had to rinse the plastic items and throw away contaminated items. However, in reality, 10% is already enough to contaminate the whole recycling bin that causes the other recyclables to become general waste.
The majority of the respondents did not know the purpose of the recycling symbols which can indicate that the symbols have not been useful or there hasn’t been enough education to teach the public about these recycling symbols.
Plastic endanger wildlife
Microplastic are present in our food and water
Plastic cannot biodegrade (which means that they are here forever!)
Attract harmful chemicals that pollute our water
Plastic can be recycled to produce new items again
Respondent’s perception of current recycling strategies
Some of the positive comments were:
“Informative”
“Can learn from this video and act as an example for my children to follow me”
“It’s a short video and benefits the world so why not”
“Yes, the earth is being heavily polluted and that is why we need to be more conscious when we throw plastics and other recycled items.”
“Yes, a lot of people do not know that contamination of the recycled items will make it not-recyclable so I’d share the video.”
Some of the negative comments were:
“No. It does not attract my attention.”
“Not interested”
“No. I’m not interested because not many people are recycling so why should I recycle? One person’s effort is useless when so many others there don’t even recycle, contaminate recyclables, etc. “
“No time, lazy, not that interested”
“No, too long!”
Some of the positive comments were:
“Informative”
“It is a good summary and has visuals that well represented each category.”
“Yes, I will probably check first if it is not too inconvenient or difficult to find such guides online. ”
“Pictures are definitely better and easier to understand for the young and elderly! ”
“Yes, it teaches me what I can and cannot recycle”
“I think I would if I had it around me when I’m recycling.”
Some of the negative comments were:
“no….. not nice to look at…ok but maybe..”
“No, it is too simplistic”
“No. I know how to recycle more or less”
What will motivate you to recycle more plastic/recycle properly?
“Implement culture like Japan to sort rubbish before disposing. I think Singaporeans work well with law. It’s tough but I believe the milleniels will do it as it’s our future.”
“Monetary rewards”
“Witnessing significant and direct benefits to the environment.”
“I think monetary rewards generally motivate many people because humans are all generally incentives-centric! Look at the example of reverse cycling: Initially, they offered 20cents for every 4 bottles/cans recycled, and the responses were overwhelming! The elder generation even went to the extra mile to pick up and collect such recyclables around their neighbourhood in hope to exchange for more NTUC vouchers. It doesn’t matter how they are motivated, but the end goal of recycling is achieved. I was disappointed that they reviewed the structure to 20cents for every 20 bottles/cans as such would certainly discourage people to “go the extra mile” because it’s actually not worth their time”
“Having more recycled bins around Singapore, not providing any plastic straws at food vendors.”
“No motivation. People will just take from the blue recycle bin anyway. No point recycling. “
Takeaways
I think one of the solutions to increase the recycling rate and reduce the contamination rate for plastic is to create something that is more practical and tangible e.g. guides that people can follow easily without much trouble. People want things to be simple, they may not want to go too much out of their way just to recycle. Although monetary rewards can incentify their efforts, I think that it may not be sustainable and they may stop the habit of recycling if the rewards stop. E.g. the reverse vending machine.
Many say that we are supposed to leave a world for the future generation that is better than before. The previous generations worked really hard to provide and create a lifestyle that will be comfortable for all of us, but it has come with an environmental cost that we should solve so that the future generations will be able to enjoy this life that was built by generations of innovation and hard work. Don’t let the minor inconveniences you face now result in a lifetime of more inconveniences?
Negative effects of plastic/not recycling
1. Plastic is ubiquitous (it’s found everywhere!): As litter in our cities, piling up in our oceans, in landfills, on Mount Everest, clogging up our drains, and more!
2. Plastics are not biodegradable: Plastics are made with extremely carbon-carbon bonds with each other, which is not present in nature. Decomposers/Microorganisms are not able to break them down like organic matter (e.g. food waste, dead animals) as they are not organic!
3. Plastics kill wildlife: Plastic debris can be entangled with animals, Animals can mistaken plastic as food and starve to death because the plastic they ate makes them feel full but they are actually not! There will be a higher chance of animals ingesting plastic if plastics continue to accumulate.
4. Plastics are present in our food and water: Most of the plastics that were produced in the 1950s were not recycled, thus it is broken down into smaller particles now and make their way into our water sources like lakes, rivers, and oceans, eventually contaminating our food and water.
5. Bioamplification: refers to an increase in the concentration of a substance as you move up the food chain. These persistent pollutants are transferred up the food chain faster than they are broken down or excreted. As humans are (sort of) the last organism in the food chain (decomposers are next), we will consume more plastic than other organisms, and it can expose us to more harmful chemicals that can lead to reproductive harm and obesity, organ problems and developmental delays in children.
6. Produce more plastic: If not recycled properly, more raw materials have to be sourced, i.e. plastic is made from fossil fuels, so if we produce more plastic instead of recycling it means we have to extract more fossil fuels which are already limited! The raw materials could have been made for other uses, e.g. for transport or to power up our houses.
The HIGHEST waste type disposed of in Singapore in 2018 was Plastic at 908,600 tonnes with the LOWEST recycle rate of only 4% at 40,700 tonnes. This is a problem because it adds to the waste that is incinerated and dumped at Pulau Semakau which is already filling up rapidly. It was projected to run out of space by 2035, but because of the increasing waste disposed of in Singapore, the first Zero Waste plan plans to reduce waste by 30% to extend its lifespan.
Singaporeans use 820 million plastic bags from supermarkets each year, which is an average of 146 plastic bags per person (126x land area of Gardens by the Bay), 472 PP disposables (3x landmass of Sentosa), and 467 million PET bottles (94 Olympic sized swimming pools/6x the length of Singapore).
60% of Singaporean households recycle regularly, but many are not doing it right. According to the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) and National Environment Agency (NEA), wrongly recycled items like old toys, clothes, soiled food packaging contribute to the high contamination rate of the recyclables collected from the blue recycling bins. 40% of the load collected in blue recycling bins are tainted, which wastes the efforts of those who wanted to recycle properly, as items that are tainted are considered trash and cannot be recycled.
According to the same survey, for households who did not recycle regularly, the most common reasons were related to convenience. Some said there are too few items to recycle, being too busy or tired, or not having enough space at home to accumulate recyclables.
As for plastic recycling, about 70% of the people in Singapore do not fully understand what kinds of plastic can be recycled, resulting in the majority of plastic products being disposed of as general waste.
We are highly dependent on plastic: we use it to keep our food clean, we use it as a carrier, we use it to build things. Plastic, although is harmful to our environment, is something that we have been using for most of the century and has been beneficial and brought convenience to our lives. However, more has to be done and thought about whether this lifestyle dependent on plastic can be sustainable in the long run.
Singapore recycling plants (what do they collect, how do they do it – single stream)
Singapore utilizes the single-stream recycling system where paper, plastic, glass and metal recyclables are deposited into the same blue recycling bin and collected by the public waste collectors (PWCs). The mixed recyclables are then sent to Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF) for sorting, then sent to recycling facilities for further processing.
Plastics are sorted into their types, melted, and made into pellets which then can be used as material for new products.
Current measures in Singapore to encourage Recycling
1. Role-playing: Ah ma was given the chance to live the zero-waste challenge for a week as encouraged by the granddaughter.
2. New non-landed private homes are required to install dual chutes for refuse and recyclables. All new Build-To-Order (BTO) Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats already have installed recycling chutes adjacent to centralised refuse chutes at every level since January 2014. As such, public education for recycling needs to be stronger! If Singaporeans are able to cultivate the habit of bagging their trash before dumping it into the rubbish chute, I’m sure recycling can be one of them too!
3. Singapore encourages a circular economy, which is an alternative to the traditional linear economy (take, make, waste). It seeks to reduce waste, recovers resources at the end of a product’s life, and channels them back into production, thus significantly reducing pressure on the environment. An example of how the circular economy can be used for plastic: recycled plastic –> melted homogeneous plastic –> turned into plastic pellets –> plastic pellets used as materials for new products
4. There have been many visual-based campaigns to encourage people to recycle and to recycle the right way. Some examples are the recycling bin label, recycling right videos (in different languages too!), let’s recycle together poster campaign, Towards Zero Waste website and a recycling mobile application by Sempcorp that schedules for door collection of recyclables in exchange for cash.
Current measures in Singapore to encourage people to do stuff/build up a habit:
Healthy 365 mobile application
Healthy 365 is a health and diet tracking mobile application by the Health Promotion Board. It has challenges to encourage users to live a healthier lifestyle. E.g. the National Steps Challenge encourages users to take 10,000 steps a day to earn the points and redeem it for $5 or $10 vouchers. I think it’s a great way to encourage Singaporeans to build a habit as we all love money… However, as a user of the app, I observed something which most users may do too. I used this app for the steps challenge because I wanted to earn the vouchers, but after I completed the challenge and there was no more monetary incentive for me, I just stopped using the app to keep track of my health/diet. Although some may continue to keep up with their habits, I think it may only be a short term solution. (Candy Crush, Pokemon Go?)
Recycle n Save is a Joint Initiative by F&N and NEA that uses reverse vending machines to encourage citizens to build up a habit of recycling. At the start of the program, people were rewarded 20 cents for every 4 containers (PET bottles/aluminum cans) they put into the reverse vending machines. It was working really well with long lines of people queuing up to recycle their containers. However, many questioned whether people were abusing the incentives and whether it was effective in encouraging people to build a recycling habit or not. The rewards were later adjusted to 20 cents for every 20 containers which discouraged people to recycle as they think it’s not worth queuing for 2 hours that little incentive.
Forest is an app that helps users to stay away from their smartphones and stay focused on their work.
Measures in other countries to encourage Recycling
Residents have to sort their waste into seven multicoloured categories at home – green for food, pink for textiles, grey for metal, yellow for paper, blue for newspaper, orange for plastic and black for mixed. Also, for the past four years, people have been able to drop off their unwanted goods for recycling at Bergström’s secondhand mall.
Briefly share your experience going through Dialogue with Time. What were some of the feelings, thoughts, challenges, and insights gained while role-playing an elderly person? (150 words)
Dialogue with Time was an insightful experience learning facts about aging from the various rooms and real-life experiences as shared by the senior guides. We were given some factual information about how we age, and what are the things we can do now as young people to prepare to age happily and to also help others if we can.
I was able to empathise more especially in the Yellow Room where we had the chance to experience some of the physical limitations that the elderly face in their daily lives.
The limitations that we had to experience in the yellow room were not foreign to us. We hear it from our grandparents, we see it from the aunties and uncles at the market, we see it from TV shows and movies. Seeing these challenges everywhere in our daily lives somehow made me feel that these problems seem normal. However, through role-playing, it helped me to experience the pain and challenges which I have never thought would be so difficult and frustrating. Furthermore, we only had to experience one limitation at the time. Some elderly have to experience most of it at the same time!
Drawing on your experience, can you think and list some of the benefits inherent in the design research technique of role-playing? (150 words)
Participants are able to put themselves in the person’s shoes through role-playing, which in my opinion, gets the message across clearer and more effective than just reading about it or watching a video. The interactive element of it helps the participant to experience it which can invoke emotions or thoughts that they will remember instead of watching a video and forgetting about it days later.
Can you think of some contexts where role-playing can be useful to help discover and define design challenges or contribute to the development of design solutions? (150 words)
I think role-playing can be useful in uncovering insights to improve the user’s understanding as well as to sieve out some problems which were not uncovered when going through it on theory. One example is during the development of new products or services during the prototyping stage.
What are some of the current issues confronting our world today? Amongst them, what is of interest and a cause of concern to you? (250 words)
The inconvenient consequences of a culture of convenience
Humans have always centered convenience as the motivation of most of their ideas since the industrial revolution, for example, the typewriter which has improved the efficiency and convenience of writing, the invention of “convenience foods” such as canned food or instant cake mix. The role of “convenience” in shaping the culture and economy of the last century, is both crucial and under-explored. With convenience in mind, I found out there are 3 issues that came from it.
1. Environmental issues:
I believe we are all guilty of choosing something convenient without thinking of the consequences that come after it. Single-use plastics, although it is beneficial for us momentarily, are here to stay on earth for a longer time than its useful lifespan. Some of the consequences are that the microplastics, which are from our contact lenses, may end up in our drinking water as they are too tiny to be filtered out. Another is that it endangers biodiversity. For example, turtles could mistaken plastic bags as jellyfish which are their main source of food which can cause intestinal blockage. This calls for concern as it may affect our health and affect our biodiversity (and more!) which results from our choice to be convenient at the moment.
“Most of the powerful and important technologies created over the past few decades deliver convenience in the service of personalization and individuality. Think of the VCR, the playlist, the Facebook page, the Instagram account. This kind of convenience is no longer about saving physical labor…It is about minimizing the mental resources, the mental exertion, required to choose among the options that express ourselves.”
According to the article by Tim Wu, he mentioned that although convenience has brought upon many life improvements for us, it has also taken away our individuality and character.
Due to our hectic schedules, we often turn to frozen food or canned food for a quick meal to satisfy our hunger. However, we often forget that convenient meals do not contain as many nutrients as freshly cooked meals. Processed food is loaded with preservatives (MSG for example), unnatural coloring, and other added flavoring. If consumed regularly over time, such foods can quickly begin to harm a person’s health, which can contribute to serious health issues, for example – obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers, and strokes (Cardiff, 2013).
4. To preserve old buildings or develop new ones? (Social)
As Singapore has limited land, the old buildings of the past have to make way for the development of other architecture that may be more economical in order for it to progress. Many landmarks of the past like the Old National Theatre or the Old National Library are demolished to make way for city developments like the construction of expressways or tunnels. Recently, the “Papa Merlion” in Sentosa was also announced to be demolished for redevelopment works to introduce more attractions.
Will we forget these places of cultural significance as we progress towards the future? Where will we find a visual representation of our culture if physical buildings like these are being demolished to develop something that has more economical value? Will we become too focused on developing the land that we forget our roots?
Of the many issues, I will be focusing on environmental issues that are caused by our need for convenience.
Why is the issue important? Who does it affect and how? (200 words)
The issue is important as it affects all of us! It affects our health (microplastics are found in our drinking water), it affects the land we live in (degradation of land), it affects the biodiversity that is needed to keep our ecosystem in balance (endangerment of wildlife on land or in water – oceans/lakes/rivers), and this is the only planet we can inhabit in! (We have no planet B!) Without taking care of our home, we won’t have a future, or even worse for some people, when we won’t have a future for us to earn more money. We have no reset button and the change we need to make is now as the UN urges that we only have 11 years to avoid potentially irreversible climate disruption.
Although many countries have made concrete plans to reduce plastic usage like China that plans to cut plastic use by 2025 and Thailand banning plastic bags this year (2020), more has yet to be done for Singapore. In 2018, only a small portion of plastic (4%) was being recycled due to the plastic having high levels of contamination, making it unsuitable for recycling. In 2018, 467 million PET bottles were used, (which is equivalent to 15 bottles per second!) and 820 million plastic bags were used from supermarkets (an average of about 145 bags per person!). Although Singapore has come up with initiatives to reduce plastic usage, they also recognise that Singaporeans have the culture of reusing the plastic bags as trash bags and a carrier for wet items. I would like to explore what more can be done to help reduce plastic usage in Singapore.
Who do you need to communicate to, and why? (150 words)
I will want to communicate with adults (aged 21 and above) to be more environmentally conscious of the decisions they make when they decide to prioritise a momentary convenience over their future. The reason why I decided to focus on adults is that they are the ones who can make a real change in shaping our future RIGHT NOW. (There is no time to lose!) As the UN said, we only have 11 years to avoid irreversible climate disruption. If the adults can make a change in their habits or lifestyle, the younger generation which is taught by them will naturally follow. Although it’s hard to expect one to change their lifestyles overnight, I believe that baby steps are better than no steps at all. Although ambitious, I also hope to bring across this reminder to leaders of organisations who can make a real (BIG!) difference in reducing the usage of single-use plastics and to consider other alternatives.
How has visual communication contributed to address the cause?
1. Doughnut Economics Diagram
The doughnut economics was created by Kate Raworth. It visualises what it takes to be in the 21st-century economy where we focus less on GDP growth but also on the Earth’s systems and its societies. It is a simple diagram that communicates the idea of assessing environmental sustainability and social performance across. If we use this to compare Singapore’s environmental sustainability and social performance to another country’s, we can easily see if Singapore is doing enough, or not.
