Remade In China

Joyce

Week 4 Response from Joyce

 

It was an amazing experience listening to Yan’s talk. I have paid attention to the trash sorting from the very beginning when the policy was about to publish, and I thought that I am familiar enough with the sorting, but obviously, Yan is the man who knows the most. He devotes so much time into the trash, almost 18 hours a day. What interests me is that old clothes can be recycled, but at a very low price. I am reminded of the news that H&M used to throw away the clothes which led to environmental pollution. Recycling them seems to be much more environmentally friendly. Acquaintance discount mentioned by Yan is also interesting. Chinese society has always been a “networking society” — your networking is super important in this country. When I was a child my grandparents used to call people to come home and take away trash like cardboard. I am a little surprised that social networking even works on such a small thing. I love the ending from him so much, when Cindy asked his feeling of working in this city for more than 20 years, he said: “every year the city is changing so fast, I see Pudong from farms to skyscrapers, and the trash increase so much with the increase of the population”. In most people’s mind trash just disappear immediately after they throw them into the trash bin, but trash is something that cannot be separated from us at all. We don’t see them is because there are people like Yan who deal with the trash for us.

 

Video made by James Chou

 

 

Poster made by Kimmy Tanchay

 

During the process of designing the campaign, we got the chance to have a conversation with the property manager who is responsible for the department of Procter & gamble. We knew something interesting from the conversation, for instance, the school will collect about 10 big buckets of residual trash and about 2 buckets of household trash, but that does not contain the trash from B1 and the second floor since cafe and cafeteria belong to Sprout Work and it is separated. What’s more, the toxic substance produced by the 7th-floor lab will be taken away by certain people who are contacted directly by the teacher, they do not belong to the school trash system either. 

 

The art installation

 

For the art installation, we came up with the keyword “food” because Eva brought a rotatable table. We then started to think about how can we turn those plastic waste into the shape of food. We found proper materials to make sushi, noodles, roll cakes, bowls of vegetables. To be honest, when the whole table of dishes was finished we were super surprised — they look nice, even like real food in the first glimpse. From my perspective, connecting food with plastic trash is really meaningful since a huge proportion of plastic trash comes from the packaging of food. Most of my plastic trash just come from waimais, and a lot on campus. Just don’t always order waimai with too much plastic wrapping, avoid using plastic bottles and straws especially in the cafe, reduce the time that you “eat” plastic, this is what we students can do the most to contribute to plastic waste reduction. 

 

Week 2 Response from Joyce

When I searched “plastic pollution” directly on Google, the first 4 websites are all advertisements, then comes the definitions and explanation. This reflects that the waste has already been an industry. 

Another really meaningful websites I have found is https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/. It is really a well-designed website with videos and pictures of how serious pollution caused by single-use plastic is. It is also rational since it appeals for no using of single-use plastic, not all the plastic which is almost impossible.

According to both the reading The Concepts of Sustainability and the lecture from Mr.Brubaker, there is a huge profit margin in the waste industry, and this really astonished me. What is interesting is that in traditional Chinese opinion, doing things related to trash, waste is really a shame. Some parents even educate their children with “if you don’t study hard now, the only thing you can do when you grow up is to pick trash”. But it seems that doing business with trash is a really beneficial thing now. Though this industry can bring a high profit, it needs really detailed sorting, especially on plastic. The traces of recycled materials Mr.Brubaker has shown mainly focus on woods, metals, and cloths. And the especially attracting advertisement movie is using net — a certain kind of plastic. If we consider more about sustainability, according to the 3E: environment, equity, economy, we cannot just escape those different kinds, the enormous amount of mixed plastic or even some harmful plastics. I have tried several times to distinguish what kind of plastic my bottle is but I failed. In Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic, the author argued that “The bottle is a medium by which the multiple enactments of disposability become co-present and connect. That shows how the ever-growing flow of plastic moves in chaotic and multiple directions. This was a bottle made to be wasted, and its anticipated future is inscribed in its multiple presents”. To reduce or even eliminate plastic pollution and turn it into a true economy, we still have a long way to go. 

 

Week 1 Response from Joyce

The thing is, I thought I had known pretty much about the environment after taking EAP about (un)sustainability, but never had I deeply focused on recycled materials and their pollution before. Though I have already known that the ocean is seriously polluted by the plastic and I often see flying plastic bags on the street, the movie on the class still shocked me. The documentary explains how the plastic is destroying the ecosystem by polluting the marine and land in a clear logic, however, what shocked me more is how dangerous it is of the daily use of plastic. To be honest I am not a “sustainable” person — I still use plastic bags, sometimes the single-use tableware, and I order a lot of delivery food. Before I was only concerned about how those plastic waste will harm the environment but never about my body. Certainly, no one wants to be a person having those diseases that they even don’t know by name. I will reduce the time of using the plastic thing in the future. Meanwhile, another question jumped out in my mind, the plastic pollution in America has already been so serious, what about China — the “landfill” of those developed countries? The inequality does exist. Are we suffering from even serious pollution? I often smell pungent smells from the plastic products I buy, will it increase my risk of having cancer in the future since I use them nearly every day? I am familiar with the policy of having a price on the plastic bags, and as a Chinese, I also totally agree with the prohibition of importing plastic. I am not who survive on exporting plastic. As mentioned in the article, the problem appeared now. China has no more capacity for those plastics, neither India, Vietnam, while developed countries cannot recycle them either. There seem to be conflictions between different countries. But the plastic pollution is a global issue, and all the human beings who have used plastic should be responsible. (Though I don’t know what we should really do either :p)