Final Presentation

Ahseek Naseeb
Mar 7, 2021
9 min read

Final Presentation

Infographic

Hidden Plastic

Model

Arrangement

How it works

Website: https://naahseek.wixsite.com/hiddenplastics

Written Component

Abstract

Plastic is widely used in variety of products, it’s very hard to live without it completely. This project reviews this situation by researching deeper into bioplastic and plastic bringing these researches to an audience to see what their thoughts are and if there may exist a future where plastic can be replaced completely by bioplastic. It also explores on how widely plastic is used in many products from different categories to see how many of them may have potential to be replaced by bioplastic. All this information was then displayed in a photographic infographic.

After that further research was made to see the consumption of plastic from different households and what are the items that they had in common. This study was then displayed in an interactive experiential piece that was made completely from eco-friendly materials like paper, cardboard, organic cotton, and wood. The piece was a model of a living room with objects scattered around, these objects were the common products that people had that was made of plastic. Then augmented reality was used to enhance this experience and give the audience more information gathered from the research made, through an app that highlights the different plastic products and separates them into different categories and made them clickable for the user to get information on each items that they click on.

The piece was specifically design to be interactive using augmented reality as many research found has proven that it was a very effective way to learn or teach which in this project it was used to display information to sensitize people high consumption of plastic of the world. It was also made 100% eco-friendly and organic as a way to support this cause and not promote plastic.

Wider Context

Can bioplastic replace plastic completely? The world knows how plastic pollutes the environment and measures are already being taken. We have developed biodegradable and compostable plastic, a plastic that is made from renewable biomaterials like plants, seaweed or even bacteria. Bioplastic can degrade on its own with the help of weathering and therefore it is an effective way to stop plastic pollution (Tan, 2020). There are already a lot of bioplastic out there and researchers keeps on making new ones using materials like seashells (Hitti, 2019), orange peel (Taccola, 2016), olive pits (Barrett, 2019) and mushrooms (Mushrooms ... The New Plastic?, 2014) to name a few, and all of them have great potentials to replace plastic. They can be made into sheets, they are suitable for industrial processes like injection moulding, they can be printed on and can be made into different colours and different hardness and lastly all of them are made up from wastes material which makes that they will not be too costly compared to normal plastic, in fact some of them could even compete against plastic. But why is it that they have not already replaced plastic? They have the same properties, they can degrade on their own and on top of that they have a lot of nutrients as they are made from organic products, therefore when they degrade, they provide minerals for our planet to stay green. Based on Vivian Tan’s talk, it has a lot to do with how we live and our incentives as humans to protect the planet, the rest of the solutions are already out there and is just waiting for actions to be taken (Tan, 2020). A lot of people do not know about bioplastic and how good it actually is, if we tell people about it, if we tell them it’s potentials to replace plastic, will people accept bioplastic, will they be willing to stop using plastic completely, will we be able to live in a world without plastic?

Specific Context

Based on Vivian Tan’s talk there already exist a plan on how to make bioplastic more available and sustainable, however the missing elements from her talk was, first, would consumers be willing to use bioplastic over the conventional petroleum based plastic, how much do consumers care about the environment, and secondly, is bioplastic suitable to all kinds of plastic products that already exist.

Based on this, my research was conducted in 2 parts. First, a survey was shared on Facebook groups to reach out to different people from different countries with different income level to find out more about the concern of consumers on plastic pollution. From the survey result, it was found that everybody thinks almost the same, their concerns about plastic pollution and thoughts on bioplastic was almost the same. 84 out of 149 people recycle and most of these people were from urban areas which means that most rural areas do not have recycling facilities. It was also found that people do care a lot about the environment and even though some people did point out a few negative point on bioplastic like, there may not be enough material to make it replace all the plastic in the world, it might not become as cheap as petroleum based plastic or it might deplete our natural resources more, they said that they will support it. A few other information was obtained like a practice of paying extra fees on plastic bottles to ensure that the consumer return the bottle for recycling in Netherlands, plastic is cheap because of the extraction of hydrocarbons and few people also mentioned that money will come in play when consumers will have to decided between conventional plastic and bioplastic.

For the second part, an observation was done based on my own consumption of plastic products in my apartment. The plastic products were categorized as electronic, hygiene, food item, stationary, misc. (for products that could not be categorized), tools and utensils, footwear, accessories, bags, pharmacy, containers and cleaning. Among all the different categories, products that already exist in another material like wood or glass and products that had potential to be made into bioplastic were noted. Based on this, it was found that most single use plastic could be turned into bioplastic, however some product that are made to last for a long period of time like water pipes or food containers might not be suitable for bioplastic as it may decompose during certain conditions in different countries.

The Work

Further research was made on consumption of plastic from different households to get a better idea on common products that people uses and the final envisioned information piece is a model of a living room displaying all the common plastic items that people have in their houses. The common items that were displayed were a television, a router, electrical cables, electric extender, electric plug, packagings, a remote control, a broom and a dustpan, pharmacy products, stationary products, a laptop, a jug and a cup, an umbrella, a toys, a mobile phone, a clock, shoes, a lamp, a rug and a plant to act as a plastic plants. It was a model made from only 100% certified biodegradable and organic materials. The materials used were paper, cardboard, toothpick, 100% organic cotton cloth, 100% organic cotton strings, tissue paper, 100% biodegradable baking paper and even the glue used for the craft was 100% organic homemade glue. Many of the items were origamis and for the rest they were DIY miniature crafts. Watercolor paint was used instead of acrylic or oil because it is less toxic and will not harm the environment. The model also has some other items like a dinning set, 2 other tables and a shelf but they do not represent plastic objects. They are here just for the aesthetic and to make it look more like a living room. Corrugated cardboard was used for the walls and the bottom of the model as it is thicker and will hold straight better for the size of the model.

Unity was then used together with Wikitude Engine to develop an AR application for Android that scans the whole model and highlights the plastic items with different colored cubes for different categories. The coloured cubes were then made clickable so that the audience can click on the different items and get more information about that particular object, how widely it is used and for some objects it also informs the audience about how plastic is used to make this product. The colored cube was programmed to disappear once clicked on and the information displayed has a window where the audience can see that item that they have clicked on. For some items the information was made broader instead of specifically for that particular item so that the audience can be better informed about other similar or products in the same category.

The model was displayed together with 2 posters, one that explains a little bit about the whole project and also have the title of the project which is “Hidden Plastics”, and another poster is a QR code that send the audience to a google drive link where they can download the app. They were both made flying posters so that the audience can hold them and read or scan at their own comfort.

The Practice

Hidden plastic was made to inform or just remind people about how widely plastic is used in products that we tend to forget or simply ignore that it is made of plastic as it is not a single use plastic. The concept came up from the first research made to see how many products have potential to be made with bioplastic, which concluded that single use plastic is easy to replace with bioplastic but other products that are not single use may not be very suitable. The research was displayed in a photographic infographic which has gotten feedback that some of the objects in the photographs, we tend to forget that they have parts made of plastic with them, but the way it was displayed did not showcased the objects well and that it would have been more interesting if it was based from further studies of common consumption of different households. This feedback became an idea for the envisioned piece as even products that are not single use plastic will one day end up in a landfill, so it is best to inform or remind people about our high consumption of plastic.

The project is a model of a living room as it is where most people have more similar plastic items. The items were not properly arranged in the model so that it would look more realistic as reality is not perfect, things are always scattered around in random positions (Stine, D., 2018), and it is also to make the model look like a place where people live. Based on further research, it was also found that glue is not eco-friendly. Most contains synthetic polymers which are thermoplastic and thermosets which are basically petroleum-based plastic (Breyer, M., 2020). Because of that the whole model was made with a 100% organic homemade glue which was made with corn starch, flour, sugar, salt and baking soda. Other than that, mostly paper or cardboard was used together with organic cotton, and toothpick as material for the model, no plastic or not eco-friendly materials have been used at all. This extra effort was made to support the cause of the project that is to sensitize people about plastic, not promote it.

The project was intended to be an experiential way of distributing information whereby the audience will be directly in touch with the reality of the project and be directly encountered by the subject of the project which was proven to work better than just thinking about it (Pimentel, J. 1999). Augmented reality was used to highlight the plastic items as it was a proper way to draw the audiences’ attention to the items and it was also a good way to display more information. Augmented Reality has also proven to be effective for teaching and learning in many studies (Garzón, J. et al. 2020). And this is because the audience will interact with both virtual and real-time applications which will bring a natural experience that will allow them to immerse in realistic experiences (A Review of Research on Augmented Reality in Education, 2015). Colors has also been used to categorize the different products as it is an easy way to group products in the same categories (Wilke, C., 2019).

Through the information displayed in this piece, we can conclude that as consumers we do not really have a choice to use less plastic or not as it is too widely used in many essential products such as stationaries, internet modem, mobile phones, electrical plugs, packaging for food products and many more.

Bibliography

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Breyer, M., 2020. What Is Glue Made Of?. [online] Treehugger. Available at: https://www.treehugger.com/what-glue-made-4847390 [Accessed 24 February 2021].

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