Recycling Project

WHY - After researching, I have found that it is a fact that not enough schools in the UK recycle, and that is a lot of wastage that goes straight to the landfills. Only 13% of primary schools in the UK have recycling facilities and I aim to make recycling more appealing to young children.

HOW - I aim to make recycling more appealing to a younger audience by designing a cover, or sticker that would be applied to an ordinary bin, rather than design a new bin entirely that would have to be bought. It would be much more cost effective to the buyer to only have to buy a sticker rather than buy a whole new bin. The materials used are going to have to be considored regarding what is the most eco-friendly and whether or not the product is biodegradable or recyclable.

WHAT - I will need to investigate into the LCA of the materials I plan to use and whether or not they are environmentally friendly.

WHO - My target audience is primary school aged children. it's a pretty specific audience but I feel that the design would not be so appealing to older children.

WHERE - This product is going to be designed to be used mainly in schools, indoors and outdoors so the product will have to be waterproof and durable.

My Action Plan

The project that I am going to be doing for my Recycling and Sustainability elective is to design a recycling bin that makes recycling more appealing to children. The new recycling bin must be eye catching and more appealing to children then the boring ones the councils have. Another fact is that the recycling bins provided by the councils are often huge things that kids can't reach to put anything into.

What kid is going to be able to reach that?

This Snoopy recycling bin is an example of a 'fun' recycling bin placed in a school that encourages the kids to recycle more.

My plan of action is to design recycling bins for schools that are the right size for kids and will be more appealing to the children, making them want to recycle. The age group that I am looking at will be younger children, under 12, because kids older than that are pretty ecologically aware anyway and don't need bright colours and characters to attract their attention.

Instead of simply making the bins brightly coloured, I intend to personalise them using cartoonish characters.

WEEK ONE: Research and preliminary sketches, pick an idea to run with.
WEEK TWO: Development of ideas, and experimentation
WEEK THREE: Developing the final idea and preparing the presentation.

-HJ x

Visual Exercises for Visual People

Okay so, during this week's session we did an exercise similar to what we do in Graphic Design occassionally, which is to split a sheet into however many sections, start one panel and pass it around the table, working off a theme or working off each other's drawings. The theme that I was given was nature, and the scene in the top-left corner is mine. Moving in a clockwise direction, it goes Me, Steph, Matt, Ian, Carolyn, Hannah, Nic, and Lauren. Isn't it beautiful?

For the next one, we divided the sheet into eight strips, and put a belief of ours into the top box, and passed it along again, with people working off the image before theirs. Moving down, this goes me, Lauren, Nic, Hannah, Carolyn, Ian, Matt, and Steph. Interesting to see that the subject matter stayed the same all the way through.


-HJ x

Places I want to save/preserve

The most obvious of all places to save, I think, would be the world's rainforests. getting cut down for land for animals to graze on and stuff, and subsequently, destroying the wild animals' habitats. Many animals are endangered because their habitats are being destroyed, and I do not approve of that at all. It's just not cool.

"Biologists have estimated that large numbers of species are being driven to extinction (possibly more than 50,000 a year; at that rate, says E. O. Wilson of Harvard University, a quarter or more of all species on Earth could be exterminated within 50 years) due to the removal of habitat with destruction of the rainforests"

Next up, the Polar Ice Caps, which are melting fast, and thus making the sea level rise, all due to Global Warming.

And this also fits in with the destruction of habitats part that I mentioned earlier when talking about the rainforest. Because obviously, the polar bears live on the ice, and if that's disappearing, there's less room for them, and where are they gonna live after that?

This chap right here is not enjoying global warming one bit. He's like, oh no!

Poor baby.

"Over the past five years, studies have found that melting Antarctic ice caps contribute at least 15% to the current global sea level rise of 2mm (0.08in) a year. "

I think that this is one of my favourite images about global warming. I've looked at this image before in my main blog while talking about visual syndoches and such, but still. I believe that showing the world as the yolk of a frying egg is a perfect visual metaphor for what's going on with climate change.

I wish we got Time Magazine here in the UK, if only for the covers.


Next is the English countryside. It's not in a particular amount of danger at the moment, but is always threatened by industry and expansion of cities. The English countryside is beautiful, and something that the British pride themselves on, and really, not something I want to lose. It's something I want to preserve.

"Tranquil countryside declined by 20% between the 1960s and 1994"

The Dead Sea, in Jordan, is a highly endangered location due to Global Warming. Combine that with the constant human interference of tourists, the Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly! I know that it's a huge tourist attraction, and it might make me a hypocrit, but it's something that I want to see myself. I'd love to visit it. But at the rate that the Dead Sea is evaporating, scientists believe that if Global Warming continues at the rate that it is, this amazing place could be gone in around fifty years.

"due to irrigation and human intervention, the Dead Sea is shrinking at an unprecedented rate, and according to experts, will completely evaporate in approximately fifty years"

Last but by no means least, Venice. Again, Global Warming and rising sea levels combined with the city's crumbling foundations, Venice is sinking. It is listed as another of the world's most endangered locations. The crumbling foundations, we can't do much about, but Global Warming, well we can try. Venice is certainly a place I would love to visit before it sinks.

"Venice, which rests on millions of wooden piles pounded into marshy ground, has sunk by about seven centimetres a century for the past 1,000 years.

But the U.S. study says that it has subsided 24 centimetres in the past 100 years.

However, Venice's mayor Paolo Costa says the report is inaccurate, although a study carried out by the city authorities concedes it will sink between 20 and 50 centimetres by 2050."

My Manifesto

My Manifesto.

- Design to raise awareness of global warming and ways in which it can be prevented.
-To encourage more people to recycle.
-To encourage more recycling in schools.
- Make mistakes and learn from them.
- Learn new skills wherever possible.
- Explore many ideas before settling on a concept.
- Get all ideas down on paper, even the bad, obvious ones, if only to get them out of the way.
- Design to inspire, make sure the message is clear.
- Take risks.
- Don't throw things away.
- Design process is just as important as design outcome.

-HJ x

Raw Material Presentation

For my raw material presentation, I chose to look at Carbon. My first choice was cotton, but it didn't save onto my memory stick and I had to re-do it, except Ian and Matt's covered cotton, so I changed my subject matter. So this is the presentation that I made and presented, albeit a little late, to my class. Carbon is an interesting material.






-HJ x