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Trash video research and documentation:

In an attempt to gain facts about trash sorting on campus and its disposal, my team sought out the Academic Building’s property manager and had a conversation with the head of the trash disposal team to fully understand the efforts that NYU Shanghai uses. We learned the trash disposal and sorting process in the B2 level of the cafeteria as well as the lengths the school ayis go through to resort improperly sorted trash.

During the collection of our research we visited the 10th to 13th faculty floors in school and examined the way trash was discarded there to gain awareness of whether different age groups recycle in different ways. Upon inspection, we discovered that regardless of whether we visited a student-populated floor or a floor with solely faculty offices, there were mistakes made in trash sorting in all cases.

Poster we created for the awareness campaign:

Link to my team’s trash awareness video:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kBoO54Mq2tAhDIGwLf1sOsZb3Qr7jOFF

Idea for midterm project:

An idea that I have for the midterm project is maybe a wearable hat or visor made out of fused and melted together plastic pieces which could act as the visor hood. For now, I plan to use a heat press and maybe the vinyl cutter to add creative elements to the design of the hat. As for the strap of the hat, I plan on using a band or elastic materials from cloth bags or totes. in addition, I would be interested in creating jewelry out of cords or thread or other recycled materials woven together.

(to be continued)

UseDem company: the first denim upcycling company in Shanghai

We were introduced to the company UseDem which is run by a Russian-born lady that was previously in the fashion industry but realized the amount of pollution that the industry contributes to the environment and decided to make a change. During the talk we learned that 70 million units of denim clothes are discarded by Shanghainese. We also learned that jeans require special conditions to decompose although they are decomposable. A concerning fact was that the washing process for 3 jeans is 16000 liters of water, which is shockingly enough water for a person for 22 years. Jeans require a disconcertingly long process to be created. 5% of a company’s jean production are thrown away and discarded and often never repurposed. The main idea behind the company is not the production of a product but rather the production of the idea and message of saving the environment.

She released that one pair of jeans can make 1 backpack. One backpack retails for 660 rmb. The company’s main competitor is the company Freitag which also uses plastic materials and upcycles them to create different variations of bags with unique designs. In addition, the company encourages donations of jeans from consumers, which results in a discount for that consumer should they wish to purchase a backpack.

I found the guest speaker talk particularly interesting as it presented a creative and innovative way to repurpose textile waste, significantly decreasing the environmental pollution, with a primary focus in denim fabric.

The response to Mr.Yan

From Mr.Yan’ talk, I learned many facts of Shanghai’s trash sorting which are beneath the daily work of trash collectors.

• The first thing that I learn and also I have already known before is that the residual trash is the largest category of trash in our daily life. 
• Even the computer and the wood table without metal legs can be recycled
• There are few toxic trash
• The daily routine of trash collectors: start from 5:30 a.m to clean the trash for morning truck at 7:00 a.m. End their work at 11 p.m
• The policy of trash sorting brings great convenience for trash collectors–trash is cleaner.
• There are still part of people who don’t follow the rules, and their unwillingness to follow rules and education from trash collectors will affect the work of trash collectors

The most impressive thing that I heard about is that the policy of trash sorting has not affected their income. In my preconception, the policy of trash sorting may lead to the regulation and systemization of the trash collection industry so that the private sector of trash collectors will be affected. But actually the thing is that the trash sorting makes the work of trash collectors easier and more effective.

Mr.Yan has been in this industry for over a decade. He shares that when he drives the collector car on the street he is extremely possible for being stopped by police. He wishes that there will be some official action helping them work better.

Art Installation 2

We shoot a video in the cafe and we want to use the form of short video shown in the cafe, where is the most chilling, relaxing place and the site people will produce trash. We want to use a humors way to educate the community of NYUSH how to correctly manage the waste they produce.

The video is about the correctness of trash sorting. Our team member Sophia acts as a people who knows how to sort the trash correctly. The first two shots are that Sophia stop the wrong trash management and teaches what is the correct trash categories. The third scene is the praise for the right trash management in a humorous style. 

Link: https://youtu.be/Hn0xO8FjnNI

or Google drive: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aCjze3GMP-ZZQAo8CVH07kSne-KHTiQt

Take away from reading

1. PICs provide a uniform system for the identification of different plastic polymer types, helping recycling companies separate different plastics for reprocessing, and in most countries, all plastic products are required to use them(correct my misunderstanding).
2. Plastic #1(PETs) and Plastic #2(HDPE) are commonly recycled.
3. The recycling rate is quite low as we all know and the reason for it is the difficulty of sorting and separating.
4. It is costly and difficult to separate them when they are mixed.
5. More mix in input, lower quality in the output.
6. Glass, aluminum, uncoated paper, and #1 #2 plastic are readily recycled.
7. Money is the only reason why they are not recycled.
8. The cost of recycling has surpassed the cost of making new recycling, with the rise in the price of oil, the cost of making new plastic will rise up and it will be fine in the future.
9. The energy of producing biodegradable plastic is high.

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. 

The guest lecturer was such a treat. Not just because he gave me his vest right off of his bareback, but because he was genuinely very informed about the trash situation and has dedicated his time to talk to us about how he does it. I look up to people like him because trash collectors have a negative stigma, especially in the West, and even though you can profit from doing it a lot of dedication has to go into the process. It is a job that we take for granted and I have never really put much thought into it because it is something that has always been done for me. I reflected on several things that he said, primarily the fact that he has a good relationship with his neighbors as well as the people who he sells trash to. It is a whole ecosystem of exchanges and relationships that I have never thought of being important. He also cleared up a question that I was always unsure of which was: where do batteries and such go? Even though he has no idea, there is someone who picks those items up and disposes of them properly.

For our next video, we were going to interview some trash collectors near the AB that Kenneth sees on a daily basis. Unfortunately, they were out because of the holiday but we are planning to schedule doing an interview towards the end of this week.

Our group decided to tackle the issue of sorting trash in one of the most congested areas of the school: the cafe. We really wanted to shed light on the fact that there is not much education on how materials are disposed of. It’s almost as if those bins with 34327509 different labels doesn’t make a difference. I caught myself making the same mistake over and over until I learned a few weeks ago about the consequences of my carelessness or even yet, ignorance. Maybe this video can help others, like myself, understand how to sort out trash for future occurrences. 

Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic

-Parkesine: presented by Alexander Parkes in 1862

-Celluloid: manufactured by John Wesley and Isaiah Hyatt in 1870s

-Both Parkensine and Celluloid were promoted as alternatives to solid materials. Lightness and versatility. Celluloid was described as “Chameleon Material” used to make combs, buttons, collars, cuffs, and billiard balls. 

-In Aerostatalian times, it was seen as Barbaric to own multifunctional instruments. It was preferred to use single-use.

-Success of plastics came about thanks to marketing which promoted them as materials of “protean adaptability”. 

-The democratization of material goods began in the 1930s, “a plastic a day keeps the depression away”

-Engineers had to give up the traditional linear approach to innovation and convert to “materials thinking” which has played a crucial part in the emergence of new relationships with materials and matter in general.

-Materials thinking: a new method of design that takes into account all parameters simultaneously rather than sequentially

-Materials are no longer a prerequisite for the design of artifacts, and would no longer limit our possibilities of creation.

Outsmart Waste: Chapter 7 The Science of recycling

-During the Industrial Revolution, the need for metals was enormous, and metal recycling was in full force.

-It takes about 95 percent less energy to recycle metals, such as aluminum, than it does to produce virgin metal.

-Only about 5 percent of plastics in the US are being recycled. 

-7 Categories of Plastics: 

#1 (PET) Polyethylene terephthalate- clear in color, soda bottle, most recycled plastic in the world

#2 (HDPE) High-density polyethylene is used in everything from water pipes to milk jugs, second-most recycled plastic in the world 

#3 (PVC) Polyvinyl chloride is used in plumbing pipes, blister packs, and vinyl records, not used in food packaging because it is toxic, negative impact on environment and health

#4 (PE-LD) Low-density polyethylene is in frozen food bags and squeezable bottles of ketchup and mustard

#5 (PP) Polypropylene is used in packaging for yogurt, margarine, and other disposable cups and cutlery, very limited recycling but is growing slowly

#6 (PS) Polystyrene is used in disposable razors, cd jewel cases, similar to #5   

#7 (Other) Contact lenses to DVDs, no one really knows what it is

Notes from Mr. Yan’s Talk

Types of trash

• Residual
• “Wet” trash/household waste
• Recyclables
  • General rule: if the plastic container is clear it is usually good to be recycled
• Toxic trash

Process

• 5:30am: residual trash truck comes to collect residual trash from the previous night
• Mr. Yan then cleans the trash cans before they are opened at 7am
• 12pm: recyclables collection
• 6-8pm: usual trash collection time from residents
• Afterwards: he sorts and sells the trash, usually finishing his day around 10:30pm
  • As a regular, he can sell at around 0.8RMB/hour, though this price fluctuates. This year it has dropped to 0.6 because of government environmental campaigns so a lot of facilities were shut down

Differences after new trash sorting laws

• There is a lot less trash that has to be sorted, and everything is much cleaner
• He doesn’t have to buy trash from residents, though some Shanghainese families still call him to buy their trash for him to sort
• However, there are still some people who are not following the rules. These people are usually a few Shanghainese families that consistently don’t listen
  • 3 strikes system: take a photo of the person after they break the rules 3 times and submit the photo
• Mr. Yan used to be able to go pick through trash cans but now a lot of these bins have been locked up and can only be accessible at certain hours
• The government pays 8RMB an hour for people to stand by the trash bins (but this is only in Shanghai…new laws have not been implemented across China)

Other Notes

• Friday and Saturday are good business days.
  • Sundays and holidays are not
• More city development = more opportunity to collect recyclables
• Biggest worry = running into police while on a cart with trash
  • The police will take the cart and disassemble it, and you have to pay a lot of money to get it fixed
  • Really isn’t a way to work around this, except to be very careful and go at night when police are getting off of work…then you will likely get a 100RMB fine instead, which is cheaper than having to repair the cart

Art Installation

For our installation, we decided to create a comedic video to encourage people to properly dispose of their waste. By introducing a little bit of humor, it was our hope for Sofia’s character in the video to be memorable each time someone goes to throw something away in the cafe.

One point that is especially important in the video is when our friend Matt tries to throw a used napkin away in the recyclables bin when it should in fact go into the residual bin. This is a common misconception about sorting that Mr. Yan brought up in his talk as well as one that I was personally previously guilty of doing.

The question now is how to display the video. There are multiple screens that can be found around campus, but it would be ideal for it to be placed somewhere in a place that generates a lot of waste or where you would normally throw things away, such as in the cafe. 

Guest Speaker: 

Notes & Reflections

• Residual trash is the most common trash that we get 
  • Dirty paper – if clean then you can recycle them but you can’t recycle used trash
  • There’s small stuff like cigarette butts, even within plastic there is clean and unclean
• Wet trash is the smallest category – usually food waste 
• Recycling is a large category – clean plastics, computer parts (metals), etc.
• Toxic trash (small category) – electronic related, chemicals, lightbulbs, smaller scale, batteries, things like expired medicines, unsure things that may or may not be trash
• Starts at 5:30 am – to clean the trash cans for the morning rush at 7 am 
• Residual trash car/truck that comes and collects at 5:30 am to collect the trash from last night 
• Wet trash will come during noon to collect the wet trash – no trucks usually come at night
• The job will end at 10:30 pm – sleeps at 11 pm (work hours/work, in general, is also dependent on if a company comes/asks for waste)
• Trash is a lot cleaner now after all the changes – but there are still people who don’t follow the new rules and regulations 
• 2/10 people will not be following the new rules 
• Toxic trash is rarely collected but there’s usually not enough, it’s on a case/report basis 
• His relationship with the people is fairly well/good 
• For people that don’t follow the rules – usually there’s no specific type – but a few families that keep making the same mistake, it seems like more Shanghainese families that do that (other people from different provinces listen but not the Shanghainese LOL)
•  It’s all about the attitude/listening to critiques 
• How does he manage textile waste (clothing) and where does that go, what category is that in?/how is it recycled?
  • They count as recycling – people/companies buy textiles, depending on the type (it might be higher), price it by the fabric and the amount of fabric
• What are certain times, seasons, or holidays where the waste management business is booming?
  • Friday, Saturday, Sunday is bad, mainly collect from companies so holidays are actually bad, its a gradual thing, not an all at once thing

Art Installation II (Video) 

So our team once again went to the cafe and decided to create a digital installation via the form of a video that would then be displayed either in the lobby or in the cafe – (wherever a digital display was available & full of people). Our idea was to create a humorous video that would teach members of the NYU Shanghai community how to properly sort/manage waste.  Ideally, this video would impart some lessons and advice in a manner that is easier to digest for millennial/gen z populations.

The content of the video features an all-knowing citizen (Sofia Shockman) who would come into scenes as a “social justice warrior” and reminds people proper waste management practices in the most humorous of ways. The video was broken down into an intro, scene 1 (improper residual waste management), scene 2 (improper recycling management), and scene 3 (proper waste management), and a call to action. 

If there was no time constraint, the video would have been displayed in areas that generated tons of foot traffic or near waste receptacles. 

Video Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aCjze3GMP-ZZQAo8CVH07kSne-KHTiQt

The Trash Map

Through out the week, we walked around campus to track the trash route and found some interesting facts. There are actually two companies that sorts trash in the NYU Shanghai academic building. One is responsible for the sorting of 10F-15F and they cater more towards professors and staffs of NYU Shanghai since most of the are located on those floors. They do not do any sorting of trash but rather they only take out the trash and place them in B2. Meanwhile, another company, which we see more often with the cream colored shirts and pants constantly cleaning the bathrooms are responsible for floors 9F-B2. The ayis collect trash and place them in B2 as well for the final sorting. There will be two to three ayis at B2 who will sort the trash starting from 2pm to around 4pm and then they will sort another round of trash from 6pm to 8pm. 

Sproutworks on the other hand, do not work with any of the trash sorting companies in the academic building but rather they have their own system. They take care of their own trash in the cafe and B1 cafeteria which is why we see different types of trashcans in those areas. They do their own sorting of trash but mostly following the Shanghai trash regulation rules. 

Below is a trash map my group and I have created to represent the trash route at NYU Shanghai:

The Art Installation

The art installation was what I believe a huge success for our group due to our great collaborative work and creative minds. Thankfully, we had a good amount of plastic waste to create our art installation and the final result was amazing. Initially, we were struggling to come up with an idea because normally plastic trash waste isn’t someones medium to create art with. However, since our purpose was to raise awareness of the plastic waste, I thought about creating a structure of a person with plastic trash in its stomach. This idea was also connected to the movie we watched, “Bag It” in the beginning of our course which talked about humans and animals actually consuming either plastic chemicals, particles or plastic itself without knowing it. 

We looked around the AB for some more material then Eva brought out a round spinning table that you would normally see in a Chinese restaurant that sets at the center of the table and you could spin it around to get the food you want. So we transformed our idea into a dinning table with food that are created all by plastic trash. We had sushi made out of styrofoams, noodles made out of plastic bags, along with table decorations made from all types of plastic.  

We decided to locate our art installation in the cafeteria near the trash sorting bins because there is high traffic around that area and more people would be able to see it. We also wrote slogans like “You are trash”, “我不吃塑” which means I do not eat plastic in English but in Chinese it also means I’m a vegetarian since the word 塑 and 素 are pronounced the same way. We hope that by having this installation next to the trash bins we are able to raise awareness on plastic waste disposal especially with the take out boxes and just to set out a reminder for people to always reduce, reuse, and recycle. 

Art Installation

Artist Statement

Our installation is a representation of the permanence of waste in our environment. The prevalence of plastic waste in particular is especially harmful because of its durability. The plastic we produce does not just go away: it makes its way into our streets, streams and oceans. However, we do not necessarily see its everlasting presence in our oceans as we go about our daily lives. This piece aims to shed light on this issue by creating a source of water we do commonly see, rain, but created entirely out of waste in an effort to force us to reconsider the amount of waste, especially single-use disposables, we produce on a daily basis.

We began by separating and categorizing all of the trash we had collected, and discovered that we had a lot of plastic bags, bottles, food packaging and bubble wrap, as well as a few cardboard boxes. From the materials, we decided to make a plastic cloud that looked like it was raining trash to highlight the effect that waste has on our ecosystem.

To make the cloud, we took bubble wrap and taped puffs of it to a cardboard box.

For the trash rain, we made string from cut up strips of plastic bags and tied various pieces of small trash to the cloud.

The land and ocean that we created for the bottom of our installation was made out of green and blue trash that we sorted out. We used a piece of cardboard as the base, covered it in pieces of plastic bags to map out the colors, and glued/taped more colored trash on top.

Installing the piece was a bit difficult because we wanted to hang the piece in the cafe, but there was no suitable grate or hanging structure. We ended up placing our piece on a stool next to waste bins in the 2nd floor cafe, so that people can see it while they throw away their trash.

Overall, I think our art installation was effective and successful for the time constraint that we had, but we definitely could have improved on how we used our materials and how we set it up. We had to use new material, tape, to attach the pieces of the bubble wrap to each other, which was slightly wasteful. Additionally, because of the issues we had with installation, we could only place our art near the trash bins. The piece’s purpose is to discourage single-use items, and if people using single-use items are throwing it away, it is already a little too late to promote our message.

Guest lecture by Mr. Yan

I learned some interesting new things about the Shanghai recycling laws that pertain to my daily life. Mr.Yan told us a few things about plastic recycling: 1. Food-stained plastic containers that have been emptied out, like takeout boxes, can be recycled. 2. Most clear plastic containers like water bottles and clear takeout boxes can also be recycled.

He also detailed his daily schedule for trash collection and management.

5:30 am – The residual trash truck comes to take the previous night’s residual trash away

5:30-7:00 am – Mr. Yan cleans the trash cans for their unlocking at 7:00 am

7:00-9:00 am – Regularly scheduled trash deposit time for residents

12:00 pm – Recyclable waste is collected

6:00-8:00 pm – Regularly scheduled trash deposit time for residents

8:00 pm and after – Mr.Yan sorts and sells the recyclable trash

10:30 pm – End of workday

The recyclables that he collects sells for about 0.8 RMB per kilogram, but this year it has dropped to 0.6 RMB/kilo because the government’s environmental campaign had many facilities shut down.

There are a couple of differences that Mr.Yan has noticed after the new trash sorting laws have been implemented in Shanghai.

• Everything is much cleaner, from the streets to the trash areas.
• There is not as much trash that has to be sorted.
• He doesn’t buy as much trash from residents, save for a few Shanghainese families that personally contact him to buy and sort their trash.
• Some people still don’t follow the trash sorting laws, and they are usually Shanghainese families that are constant offenders of the trash rules.
• He used to be able to go through trash cans to collect recyclables to sell, but most of these bins are now locked up and can only be accessed at certain hours.
• The government pays people 8 RMB an hour to stand by the trash bins and check to see that trash is being sorted properly.

As for his own business of selling recyclables, these are some interesting points that he made.

• Friday & Saturday are good business days, while Sundays and surprisingly, holidays are not.
• The biggest problem he encounters is running into the police with his trash cart. The way that the police penalizes trash sellers is by taking the cart and disassembling it.
• His workaround to this issue is to be careful and only drive his trash cart at night when the police are too tired to disassemble the cart; the police will only give him a 100 RMB fine.

Trash Campaign Video

For our trash campaign video, we decided to create a humorous video to encourage and teach people how to properly sort and dispose of their waste. We felt that humor would help to make the message more memorable and get more people talking/sharing our video.

We wanted to show some common misconceptions about trash sorting, especially what does and does not belong in the recycling bin. For the confusing trash items, we created a different scene for a disposable coffee cup and a used napkin being thrown out incorrectly and reprimanded by Sofia.

In the coffee cup scene, Ben tries to throw a disposable coffee cup into the residual waste bin, but this is incorrect because food stained plastics can and should be recycled.

In the used napkin scene, our guest actor and friend Matt tries to throw a used napkin into the recycling bin, which is also incorrect because it belongs in the residual waste bin.

Now, there is a question of where and how the video will be displayed. Half of our group went to B1 to talk to Mary Kate about Sproutworks’ initiatives to promote proper waste sorting, and they actually asked us for suggestions. My belief is that people learn much better by example, so having a video of different examples of waste sorting was a good idea.

We also thought about how we might display the video. One option was to have it play and loop on a physical screen in the 2nd floor cafe or in the B1 cafeteria near the trash cans since it is where most of the school’s waste is generated. We also thought about disseminating it on social media, since it is a funny video and the medium lends itself to being shared and viewed by many people on their own screens.