Hilina Bayew – Guest Speaker: Adele Hatha

Today’s speaker, Adele Hatha, shed an interesting perspective through her experience with Precious Plastic. She spoke about the various prototypes they had to test out and tweak to find the perfect fit to shred the plastic. I found it quite interesting that the motors were more efficient yet they made use of the bikes since people seemed to respond to them more. This compromise showed me that it was more about increasing and broadening engagement rather than 100% efficiency. The fact that Adele played towards her strengths in design and seeked for partners such as BMW to increase their engagement was rather smart in my opinion. Additionally the samples provided at the big events that came with such partnerships allowed individuals to visualize how plastic can be formed/molded from bottle caps into more useful forms (rather than it being just an abstract concept). I believe that all of the factors I have mentioned above are what helped and are continuing to help Precious Plastic with its awareness and engagement campaign. 

I really enjoyed the hands on approach implemented by Adele and her coworkers. Once COVID subsides I would love to have workshops at the NYUAD campus not only for students but also for the professors kids that live on campus as they are quite literally our future. If we could have them more conscious and aware of the issues our environment faces with the use of single use plastics then maybe their habits could form differently to ours from a young age. 

An ironic fact I discovered during today’s class was the fact that plastics were invented as a way to save the planet. I was not aware of this previously but apparently paper bags were what previous generations made use of which required the cutting of countless trees. Therefore plastic bags were a ‘more sustainable’ alternative and yet today we know that plastic bags are in fact detrimental to our environment.