Akshitha Veerla

For the first 2 weeks of term 4, our group has done a lot of research and assigned people to specific places to look up; Akshitha has researched Grand Canyon, Cassie has researched Lower Falls, Adeolu and Kate have both researched the Hot Spring and Lauren has researched the Volcanoes. We have planned and begun to design a board game and our plan is to design the game during week two and create it during week three. Everyone is currently researching the different animals to cooperate with the board game.  The feedback we got from our last progress update has given our group the understanding that we should set deadlines for what we plan on completing next. We plan on taking this feedback to then make a timeline of what each member should complete over the next few weeks so we don’t do everything last minute.

As part of our Year 10 Humanities course, we are able to research a project of our own choice and to create an outcome to showcase at a final exhibition in Term 4.

The topic that I have chosen to research is Yellowstone National Park in the United States of America.

Our main focus area is the 5 themes of geography in terms of the park’s features. And the ecosystems and natural wonders in Yellowstone park.

The steps I have completed so far is completing my annotated bibliography, the research, and organisation of all group members are going to do.

Our plan for continuing our project includes research, planning the design of the project, and creating the different parts of our presentations.

Aim-

This term we have been doing a course that is called global goals. The aim of this course was to focus on one of the un global goals and to create an initiative that could help better the community. And this could relate to anything from education to sustainability. We choose to create an initiative to help better the recycling system at all saints by categorizing soft plastics.

UN Global Goals-

In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals (officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs). These goals have the power to create a protected, better world by 2030, by ending poverty, fighting inequality and addressing the urgency of climate change. These goals cover many different aspects, from education, healthcare, world hunger, equality to sustainable practises, living and peace.

For our project we choose to do the 12^th goal. Which is all about responsible consumption and production. The purpose of this goal ensures sustainable consumption and production patterns. Our planet has provided us with an abundance of natural resources. But we have not utilized them responsibly and currently consume far beyond what our planet can provide.

What are soft plastics-

Soft plastics are basically one-time-use plastics. Such as the ones shown in the picture. Some common examples of soft plastics are plastic bags, bubble wrap, chip bags anything that includes soft plastic sheath. Locally, these plastics makeup about 20% of the volume of Australian household landfill bins and are often found incorrectly placed in recycling bins. Normally, plastic items take up to 20 to 500 years to decompose in landfills. That is if they ever get to the landfill. As they are prone to blowing into our rivers, oceans, and waterways and damaging marine life.

Global influence-

On average 500 million tonnes which are 500 billion kg of plastic is produced annually worldwide. But only a very small three million tons or a tiny 8.7 percent of the plastic produced is actually recycled. The rest is incinerated, causing harmful chemicals to be released and put in landfills to rot for the next couple hundred or so years, or is thrown into our oceans, killing our ecosystems. In 2020 we generated more than 900% more plastic than in 1980. Which was only 40 years ago. In 1980 we globally produced 60 million tonnes, but now we are producing 500 million tonnes. And these plastics aren’t going anywhere. It is still on earth, as it takes usually over 200 years to decompose in the landfill. And if the plastic isn’t in landfills it is somewhere also on earth. Like in our ocean, and even when it is incinerated the gases released stay in our atmosphere polluting the earth. And by 2050 we could have more fish in the ocean than plastic.

Survey-

We sent out a survey to all saints’ community, to the teachers, senior school students, and the 5/6’s in the junior school. The purpose of this survey was to find how much all saints really knew about soft plastics, and how much they used every day. We found that…

Our design thinking process-

Our project-

This is where our project comes in. First, we found a problem in society that we were all passionate about. We then focused on a way that we could implement a system in the all saints community to help do our bit to recycle soft plastics. The problem with this issue is that even if the community wanted to help, ard recycle many do not know how. Our aim is to not only create a system to help recycle but to also spread awareness of the issue at hand.

Design Thinking process-

To help guide us through our project we used the design thinking process.

First, we Empathised- thinking about who our target audience was. We want everyone to become aware of the problem like we did and to learn how to recycle. But as we were just at the moment targeting all saints. We then planned to created posters to help educate the students at all saints. And to post them all around the senior and junior school.

Next, we defined our goals and topic. We decided that we would focus our project on just soft plastics exclusively. We research and tried to inform ourselves about the problem we had found. Before we moved onto the next phase. Because how were we meant to teach and raise awareness for the problem unless we knew it ourselves.

Ideate- We then gathered ideas to solve the problem of no one knowing what soft plastics were. Or the damage they caused to our environment, or how to really recycle them. We started with brainstorming ways to solve this problem, which we concluded that the best way to inform all saints. Was to do it actively. This is when we came up with the solution to create a new bin system for all saints. Making one exclusively for soft plastics. As through our survey, we found that a lot of people bring them to school, or buy them through the canteen though most of the things there are bio-degradable still some aren’t.

Prototype-

• The next part of our project was to start our prototype, this started with a few sketches till we had vague idea of what we wanted. Then we got our bins, cleaned them, and started to paint the lids. We had decided on the colour blue- as it fit the other bin colours.

Test-

• A few weeks ago, we put our finished bins. To see who uses them and who doesn’t. To start with we just had two. One in the junior school another in the senior both in places that are seen by many.

Trials and Mistakes-

There were a few mistakes made along the way. Such as when we were painting the bins, we soon learned that regular acrylic paint wasn’t going to work. So, we then switched to spray as the final solution. But the first time it didn’t work which then let up to a bit more experimenting till finally we got the paint to stick to the bins properly. We also had to figure out what was going to happen to the soft plastic once we collected it.

Reflection-

The practical part of getting the bin lids blue did not succeed the first time, neither the second but finally it did the first time. As the first two times the paint kept chipping therefore this would not be a realistic solution as the bins would not last in harsh weather conditions. So, we scraped to remove the layers and started from scratch. And then sprayed the paint on the actual bin lid instead of on the acrylic paint.

Personally, my individual successions was designing the poster and organising the presentations. However some challenges was the bin lids and time management as I had to juggle tasks and tests from other subjects with global goals. Therefore, the bins and posters were put out later than expected.

Where to next-

We collaborated with two years 6’s which were part of the junior school sustainability club to help try and include the entire school community in our project. They helped us decide where to put the junior school blue bin, based on popular areas junior school kids hung out, and which bins were most used. We are planning to hand over this project to Zac and Corbyn when we graduate who are also in sustainability club and can introduce it to the members.

The people in my group are me and Laura.

Our Product –

Our idea was to make a product that encourages people to grow their own food. By doing this it not only supports the four pillars of sustainability but it is better for a person’s physical and mental wellbeing. Our product is put simply a starter kit for growing your own fruit and vegetables. Our product’s purpose is to show people how easy it is to grow your own veggies and aims to promote more people to do it as it is not only good for the environment but it also good for you.

Reflection –

Throughout the presentation, we spoke about how this product we made supports sustainability and how it makes the future better socially, environmentally, politically and economically. We also showed the effects of store-bought food mathematically using graphs e.g. how much land has been cleared in Western Australia in the past 50 years to show the effect of how much the transportation of food negatively impacts the environment.

Rubric –

I think we did well but didn’t meet the highest mark on the rubric as the presentation had everything we had to say about growing food sustainably but wasn’t organised properly. However, we made sure to use each other’s weaknesses and strength’s (Laura made parts of the script, I made slides on the presentation), we chose a presentation format because we are able to display all of our information on it clearly, we used graphs and statistics to show how our products help the world mathematically and we showed how our product is part of the future economically, socially, politically and environmentally.