Student designers reflect on their museum exhibit, which seeks to portray the current status of recycling in our community.
Beyond the Bin was an interactive museum exhibit designed by five students from the Faculty of Environment Knowledge Integration department for KI-X 2019 (Knowledge Integration Exhibition). With the exhibition themed around the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we knew we wanted to focus on something particularly relevant. We settled on SDG #12 Responsible Production and Consumption and within this SDG, the topic of recycling. We chose this after discovering the shocking changes that are currently underway in this industry.
In late 2016, China effectively ended its imports of foreign recyclables. This created major ripples in the North American recycling market, since two-thirds of recycling was being imported by China before this policy change. Our exhibit explained this situation to give global scale to what would eventually boil down to individual choices. We used hand painted cartoons to dive into the local recycling system, detailing the way materials are sorted and giving examples of the products they are turned into. We collected trash around campus (including in each of the Environment buildings) to show the misunderstandings and mistakes that are causing items to be thrown out or improperly recycled, which lowers the University’s waste diversion rate.
It was important to us that our visitors began to question their own waste-related habits, so we introduced them to the 5 Rs (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot), a new framework for waste which prioritizes refusing and reducing over recycling. We then asked our visitors how often they had undertaken the actions of the 5 Rs so they could effectively evaluate and understand their own sustainable practices. We also wanted to highlight the importance, and ease of reusing, so we showed visitors three simple DIY’s that they could make by reusing common items like an old t-shirt or a plastic pop bottle.
The significance of the blue bin and recycling in Kitchener-Waterloo made our exhibit even more relevant to our visitors. The blue box was invented in Kitchener in 1981. The summer before, Nyle Ludolph (garbage collection manager of Superior Sanitation) asked his family to separate recyclable materials from their garbage, saw the possibilities, and wondered if this could be done across the city. Faculty of Environment graduate, Eric Hellman, (now a partner with Resource Integration Systems (RIS) Ltd.) proposed a test program to Nyle and his boss, Ron Murray, and the blue box program was born. RIS designed the program; Superior (re-named Laidlaw Waste Management) did the collection; and Kitchener’s Jack Rosen sold the materials collected.
“The motivation for the first Blue Box program wasn’t just about ‘getting people to recycle.’ It was about helping people become aware of the power they have to make a difference in the world, by doing something about garbage. And the Box became a symbol of that,” says Hellman. The program became such a success, it eventually became the model for municipal recycling programs across Ontario, and in many parts of the world.
A couple of months after the completion of our exhibit the Canadian government announced its plan to ban single-use plastics by 2021. Ultimately it is about replacing single-use plastics with more sustainable materials and reusing and reducing what we can. However, there are many constraints and factors to consider. We need to think about all of the individuals who would be affected by this, those with a disability who need to use single-use plastic items like straws or the many Indigenous Canadian communities who rely on plastic water bottles due to their lack of access to clean drinking water. To decrease single-use plastics, and for a complete ban to work, major corporations need to step on board. They need to think about the products they are creating and the materials they are using. As consumers we need to find companies that are already being smart about their production choices. Changing our habits to move towards zero waste by shopping at local markets and bringing our own containers, and buying at bulk stores or independent retailers is a good start. But as consumers, we must be conscious of our choices, and support corporations that are working to do better.
Knowledge Integration Exhibition
KI-X is a showcase of experiential learning which begins in second year with learning about museum design and how people learn, then traveling to a European city to study museums. This year’s group traveled to Amsterdam last May to look at case studies and get inspired for their own exhibits. Then they spent third year working in groups of 6 to research their topic, design the communication and interactive components and bring their exhibits to life.
