Embedded Files
Here is our Timeline for our entire community project journey:
Biotide consits of Afaaf Farrukh, Grace Hirst and Lana Mourad （to see more about us and our roles head to Team)
In our community project journey, we were given the Design Process model to successfully get through each step.
Contents:
Understanding the issues
Understanding the issues
As a group we thought of some issues that revolve around the UN Global goals; life below water and sustainable cities and communities:
Pollution.
Unsustainable products/product packaging.
People who do not know about the extreme crisis of our climate issue.
Extinction of Marine animals eg. Maui Dolphins, leatherback sea turtles.
Marine animals affected by plastic eg. sea birds, sea turtles, and whales.
Who is affected by this issue and why?
Lots of Fish and wildlife have been affected by unsustainable products. For example, the Maui dolphin has been affected by some of the unstable products we use like...bottle caps or cling wrap.
Empathising with the issues
Empathising with the issues
As a group, we emailed multiple stakeholders but only received a few responses. The stakeholders we wrote to were...the WGHS Enviro Prefects, Commonsense food organics, Riley Hatawhawy from Young Ocean Explorers, Sealord, Ecostore, Our previous science teacher from WGHS Dr Corbett and a Professor from the University of Auckland who was studying microplastics. Out of the people we contacted, we got replies from just the WGHS Enviro prefects, Coomensence food organics, Riley Hatawhawy, Sealord, Eco Store and Dr Corbett. We come back later to the information from the interviews in the Ideate phase of our project.
Define the issue
Define the issue
We intend to solve this problem by either creating a product that anyone can make with recycled rubbish or plastic. This may include products like Jewelry or Phone stands. Once we know how to create this product we will then go around the community to talk about this problem and teach younger audiences how to make the product out of recycled rubbish or plastic.
OR we will create an alternative to plastic packaging. To do this we would interview companies that are currently using plastic to package their products and think about the alternatives they could use. We can also interview Environmentalists and get their opinion on the major problems happening in our oceans that are endangering marine life or Interview stores that use or sell eco-friendly alternatives.
Ideate for solution
Ideate for solution
From our interviews we found the company Sealord, didn't answer our request for an interview with them, instead sending us links for their 'eco-friendly' approaches to their fishing. Riley Hatawhawy from Young Ocean Explorers wasn't available for us to interview her but said to keep in touch about our project. Ecostore also gave us an opportunity to interview them but we had already moved on to the next stage of the process and weren't looking for any more stakeholders. The people/stakeholders we did interview were WGHS Dr Corbett, Enviro Prefects and Commonsense Organics Foodstore. From these interviews, we had a really good idea from 3 different perspectives. One from a mother that is trying to minimise waste as much as she can, a strong perspective from a group of young people spreading awareness about the issue and a business group that's sole purpose is to provide pro-environmental options. From our interview with Commonsense organics, we found that degradable plastics degrade into plastic shards which end up as microplastics that end up again, in the ocean. Biodegradable plastics are effective in terms of breaking down completely because they are often plant-based - meaning they don't go into the ocean. However, since they are plant-based when they break down they release methane which enters the atmosphere and in the end contributes to climate change. There is also compostable plastic which eventually breaks down completely but it needs specific conditions to do so and is still relatively new. We also asked the interviewee from commonsense organics about what made their business use eco-friendly packaging...saying "I have seen supermarkets sell all their organic produce in plastic bags. It's like a need to have everything that's organic packaged. For example, the apples we buy are from the same supplier as the supermarkets. We get the same apples in a box and put them on the shelf, the exact same apples will be sold in a supermarket in a bag". This interview gave us a whole insight into all these other avoidable problems that just weren't taken seriously by big companies. From our interview with Dr Corbett, she gave us some good insight into how she tries to minimise waste as much as possible and how it's incredibly difficult as almost everything comes in packaging. The enviro prefects dive into the statistics in our community giving us examples and feedback on some basic ideas. Our stakeholders had given us a good idea of where we were headed next...
voice recording of interviews:
Photos of us brainstorming ideas:
Photos of us brainstorming ideas:
Our solution:
Our solution:
We will make a pop-up book that includes old and reusable plastic, augmented reality and information about how plastic continues to harm our ocean and planet. The book will have several QR codes and interactive features. One of the features is augmented reality which will show the damage that plastic has done to marine animals. Another feature we will add is a game that sorts out the plastic. For example, we will have recyclable trash cans and characters that keep our users interested in how the trash in our community is processed. Our book will be made of plastic that we find day-to-day to encourage people to see plastic waste as a base for a new product.
Draft Prototypes:
Draft Prototypes:
This is our cover for our prototype in which we created character that would showcase its journey as a marine animal through the oceans.
Prototype the solution
Prototype the solution
Our draft idea for our prototype was also sent to our past interviewees who gave us enough feedback to get us started in making our actual prototype.
Our Stakeholders for the prototype: Primary school children and individuals who are interested in learning more about environmental issues in marine life.
Resources: School, home, shops etc.
Issues: Marine life plastic pollution and environmental issues involving waste.
One of our features inside the pop-up boook includes a game - where players will help Louis to escape the plastic bottle in the ocean. This was created by us, by using the software 'Flowlab'. From this software, we were able to create a small game with no coding. The difficulty of this game is medium, to ensure our users enjoy the challenge of Louis escaping!
Our Final solution
Our final solution was our pop-up book - here it is completed:
Page 1
This is our pop-up book cover with Louie Bubbles in his signature purple colours + another fish,
Page 2
This is the contents page. This page explains what our project is about with a QR code leading to our website.
Page 3
This is the introduction page were Louis tells a little about himself and where he is heading!
Page 4
This page explains the impact of aluminum foil in our oceans and how marine life is affected by it. The QR code leads to a kahoot in which our users can test their knowledge!
Page 5
This page is about plastic bags leading to a Kahoot about how other animals can be effected by the bag we use to shop with.
Page 6
On this page Louie bubbles gets stuck in a bottle and the QR code leads to a game where the user helps the fish escape.
Page 7
Lastly, this page shoes us the impact of how Styrofoam impacts the turtles.
How we created the pop-up book with keeping a Reuse, Recycle focus in mind:
All the pages where printed from the Westlake Girls Highschool printers.
The cardboard that we used to make the pop-up book was all recycled. In total we used a shoebox and another small box to make the entire pop-up book.
The shinier plastic bag on page 5 was also reused.
The Styrofoam and bead artwork was also saved from being thrown away - instead used to create an enhanced visual effect in the book.
On page 6 - the plastic bottle was cut down and reused as well as the 2 bottle caps.
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