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Description of the process, experiments, failures and successes. Your inspiration behind, how your project can be implemented in Shanghai or any other place. Finally, how your project can educate people and raise awareness of environmental issues.

Initial Thought Process:

Prior to taking this course and prior to taking Sustainable Fashion, I was not as socially aware of our environmental issues. I had some form of an understanding but truthfully never felt had a form of connection or reason to care. It sounds bad, but it was not until my best friend created a company to help plastic consuming that I began to take not only an interest but have a better understanding of what it really means to be sustainable and breaking down that word. The word sustainable is one that can be shaped in many different forms. It’s such a broad term that I feel that many people tend to hear this term and not have a complete understanding of what it really means. This is why for my final project I felt that taking a more educational route was the right approach for me.

Initially I wanted to create a form of installation in collaboration with a Sustainability in Fashion event happening in Shanghai. I found out that many venues do not recycle their bottles and have these viable materials that can be continued to be of use. I gained inspiration from the team that came and gave a talk about their work in Tanzania. I myself took efforts around my house to upcycle different materials such as a bottle and use it as a vase. As well as take wine bottles like the team in Tanzania and repurpose them to be used as vases and pots for my plants. I wanted to create something and show these venues specifically the venue collaborating with this event how one can take something and put it to to other uses. 

 

However, after breaking down our ideas in class it was suggested that rather than doing this outside of school to do something within the school. This not only was a suggestion I very much agreed with but it made me reflect on how we could do more on campus to become more aware as a student body and do more within our community to become more environmentally aware. 

Process/Execution:

Final Product: 

Final Reflection:

RMC

Attached is my documentation and my process journal throughout the semester. I always like having hard copies of my work and writings, in this journal you will see documentations as well as quotes and important takeaways from readings and daily encounters. 

 

 

Cradle to Cradle

McDonough and Braungart have an interesting take on the Industrial Revolution and just how things were designed with such specific purpose during this era. I was struck by how, “the general spirit of early industrialists and of many others at the time was one of great optimism and faith in the progress of human kind”. Much of what was being made was not necessarily the most sustainable but it had it’s purpose. They were creating equipment that was ideal, it fulfilled it’s purpose. Yet, we have to be mindful we don’t make the same mistakes and toxicity it’ brought to our world. 

 

Final Project

Bottle Installation

• Tanzania: Wine Bottles
• Create an installation of used tequila/wine bottles. 
• Up Shanghai
• Sustainable Women in Shanghai Conference
  • Finding different ways to use wine/tequila bottles.
    • Different workshops, events, etc. 

Bubble Tea Cups:

• Change or create a system to make reusable cups ft. retractable straws. 
• Kaffeeform x Coffee Cups  https://www.kaffeeform.com/en/shop/ 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMX7aQpIwl4

WEEK 3: TOPIC: PLASTIC WASTE AND ITS IMPACT ON ECOSYSTEMS

Shanghai’s Informal Waste Management Report:                          1.First, is informal and government run with contracted companies.  

2. Second, entirely private and involves millions of informal workers collect, store and sell waste. 

Landfill: Most common form of waste treatment             Incineration: Waste is dispused by burning.                    Recycling & Recovery: Non-existent in Shanghai’s formal sector.

 

The Concept of Sustainability 38-56

In this part of COS, the chapter discusses  how business can become more sustainable and give the term, “eco-efficiency”. How many companies are beginning to become more conscious of the way they operate. To be honest, it was not until my best friend started his own sustainable business that I began to take an interest in sustainability. It wasn’t like I wasn’t aware of the issues are faced in our earth but until I was put into a sustainable community that I began to get an understanding of what is happening. Miguel created the Boomi Group to of course promote his sustainable products but to also create a community in Shanghai that could actively engage in discussions on how to live more sustainable lives and ultimately live in a more sustainable city. 

Week Two:
TOPIC: PLASTIC WASTE AND ITS IMPACT ON ECOSYSTEMS 

 The Concepts of Sustainability Instantly reading this text I think about a class I took last semester, Sustainable Fashion. In this course we dissected the term “sustainability”. This term is one that is now used so loosely that it’s great to be able to get a concrete idea of what it means to be sustainable. 

 

• Economy

• Equity

• Environment

 

Sustainable Agriculture vs. Carrying Capacity: Alteration of individual and collective human behavior or new technologies.

Sustainable Economy vs. Sustainable Society 

Biggest Takeaway from this Chapter: The Critique of Technology strain of thought focuses its attention on the roles that technology and technological innovation have played in promoting rather than avoiding environmental degradation, particularly when technologies are brought to bear on symptoms of problems rather than on fundamental issues. 

 

Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic Plastic economies: Made to be wasted PET and topologies of disposability

Learn everything about plastic pollution.

THREE KEY FACTS I FOUND: 

1. Since the 1950’s around 8.3 BILLION tons of plastic have been produced worldwide.
2. A MILLION plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute.
3. The average person eats 70,000 microplastic each year.

Plastic Pollution: How Humans are Turning the World into Plastic               

Why Plastic Pollution is Personal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJiQt9ASSNg  

City to Sea: non profit organization running campaigns to stop plastic pollution at source. #SwitchtheStick: make cotton bud stens out of paper.

And yet there’s a key difference: Ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers, at least so far. To do something about it, we don’t have to remake our planet’s entire energy system.

 

China stopped taking a long list of garbage and it’s causing chaos    

In this Vice article it’s interesting to see how when China implemented their new policies, the country was quick to take on the new policies and move forward. For instance, my neighbor whom would always throw anything and everything away began to really go through her trash and would even watch me throw my trash and assist me in making sure that I was sorting my trash properly. This made me reflect on how if this were to have happen in the United States, it would not be taken so lightly as it was here. As soon as the government implemented these new rules everyone seemed to follow. However, I feel as if this were to have happened in the US, there would be some pushback. Sure, it’s suggested to recycle but its not like it is here now where it is something everyone needs to follow. This just makes me think about how can we do our job to make sure that we enforce these types of laws and actions in our own home countries.

Plastic Recycling Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It. The first sentence of this article made me think of two things:

1. Katie Chen’s Capstone Project, Class of 2019
2. How is that I never knew that rich countries would send their trash to poor countries in Asia? 
   1. I was really upset at myself that I did not this was something that occurs. It makes me realize how much we don’t seem to put attention to the world or things until they’re actually affecting us.

“Without bold new ideas and management strategies, current recycling rates will no longer be met, and ambitious goals and timelines for future recycling growth will be insurmountable.”   – Laura Parker & Kennedy Elliott