450 Project!

By: Celine & Ju of KIS

SDGs: Responsible consumption and production
My first visit to McDonald’s after COVID-19 was the spark of the “450 Project,” which took me about one and a half years to come to an end. It was this one thing that got my attention: non-reusable plastic lids (aka. 뚜껑이) on top of the reusable plastic cup. On October 12, 2020, McDonald's decided to implement a beverage lid '뚜껑이(ttukkeong-i)' that does not require plastic straws. In order to reduce the use of single-use plastics while thinking about the environment, plastic straws that were hard to recycle properly were banned, and the ‘뚜껑이’, which is easily recycled and does not require plastic straws, was being used in Mc Donald’s. However, the production of the lid itself needed more plastic, and stores even gave paper straws even if you did not ask for them. I wondered if this was really an action to think about the environment and bring awareness to the customers. Although I tried to make a collaboration with McDonald’s, it did not work well, and so I decided to find another way to inform people about their use of plastic waste at a closer and more achievable level. I came up with this 450 project about the time my partner Ju joined me, from the idea to inform people about excessive use of plastics and to reduce their waste. Our project goal was to make a visual piece of plastic bottle usage, informing students about their concerning consumption of plastic and suggesting a way to reduce the waste. We also wanted to add a data piece—via poster—to the exhibition to inform people. Throughout the project, we went through a lot of different designs and thus concluded the final design, shown in the first photo.

450 is a number of years for a single plastic bottle to fully decompose in nature, and we want to emphasize this enormous number ‘450’ to KIS students and teachers, thus making them at least think about the numbers when they are using plastic bottles. We gathered used plastic bottle caps from our school and neighbors and thus completed our 450 project.
My interest in environmentalism has been consistent since middle school when I planned a grande project of creating a reusable straw from fiber strains from the banana’s stem. Moving to another school didn’t stop my passion for promoting sustainability and raising awareness of our irresponsible consumption habits. I continued to inquire about possible project ideas and search for starting points until I got introduced to Celine’s 450 project. Beyond getting intrigued by her ideas, I was excited to collaborate with her – adding my ideas and interpretations to her preexisting ones. We began with brainstorming our ideas together: finding convergence of our two different motives regarding the twelfth SDG. Upon concluding that we were both interested in spreading awareness of our irresponsible consumption habits, we quickly started our planning – marking the beginning of our 450 projects, portraying both the statistics from our school students' consumption and simultaneously warning them of their unsustainable consumption. We have successfully produced a piece that fulfills our initial goal by showing the number 450 – the number of years it takes for one plastic bottle to decompose – using bottle caps that our school students used. Additionally, through our infographic, we aimed to provide a deeper examination of the plastic usage of our school students and a more extensive explanation of the SDG. Through this special experience, I learned the value of collaboration and the potential of collaborative minds. More importantly, having gone through a design cycle, I have learned how to effectively “design my impact” and measure its influence.