GD Capstone 09

Title: Kees Campaign (Your Bag, Your Choice..)حملة كيس (حقيبتك، اختيارك..) ٠٠٠

Emotional statement :-

Camels are dying everyday and no one is feeling for them. They simply ate a lot of plastic bags that someone might have thrown while having a picnic with the family, or maybe someone did not need it anymore and just threw it from his car window. Camel’s deaths are the results of our actions and misbehavior. We teach our children about keeping the house clean, but how about keeping our Dubai clean. There are already many alternatives to plastic bags, so why not use them? It is always a our choice of leaving this issue as it is or take action and change it.

Tradition:
In the past, our ancestors used to carry baskets or cloth bags with them when going shopping or even carrying items in them that they want to sell in the market. Those baskets were made out of palm leaves, which are hand made, and organic materials. They are used for a long time & even if they get damaged they wont harm the environment if thrown or eaten by the animals. Also, the environment was clean at that time and there was no waste at all. Our ancestors were keen on not to trash the environment so why are not we?

Fusion:
In the present, Dubai is second to the US in terms of waste issues. People buy a lot of things and use lots of plastic bags, and when they don’t need them, they just throw them. They don’t know how harmful this little; light thing can be on the environment. It’s made out from toxic materials like polyethylene and takes 1000 yeas to disintegrate. Also, it takes 11 barrels of oil to make 1 ton of plastic bags. Moreover, this plastic bag can kill hundreds of camels every year, just by eating it. The camels are in danger now and our precious Dubai is becoming or will become an unhealthy environment if you or we don’t start doing something about it.

Vision:
The future is ours; we either make it happy or sad for our children and their children. It is our choice to either keep on using and throwing plastic bags here and there and result in camel to get extinct or keep Dubai clean and get rid of all the plastic bags and never use them again. We created this object to make our lives easier, but we didn’t know that it’s this harmful, now that we know, why don’t we get rid of it and go back to what our ancestors used to do, carry our own bag. Anything that Allah (God) created is sustainable and never harmful, it is our creations that leads to harmful things.

Why?
Camels are dying every year because of plastic bags. Yes they are just animals but they deserve to right to live just like us.

What?
Do not misuse plastic bags and be careful how you use them. Gradually, stop useing it and the source will stop producing.

How?
Just say no to plastic bags when possible. Start using your own bag.

When?
Lets start to not use plastic bags from now, 2009, and see the results by 2010. If we all do it, we can make the change.

Signature image :-

Research :-

Top Facts - Consumption

# Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.

# According to the EPA, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year.

# According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion)

# According to the industry publication Modern Plastics, Taiwan consumes 20 billion bags a year - 900 per person.

# According to Australia’s Department of Environment, Australians consume 6.9 billion plastic bags each year - 326 per person. An estimated 0.7% or 49,600,000 end up as litter each year.

Top Facts - Environmental Impact

# Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

# Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade - breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

# As part of Clean Up Australia Day, in one day nearly 500,000 plastic bags were collected.

# Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group harvests 30,000 per month.

# According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, plastic bags have gone “from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78 degrees North [latitude] to Falklands 51 degrees South [latitude].”

# Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.

Top Facts - Solutions

# In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag consumption tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90%. Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to this reduced production. Governments around the world are considering implementing similar measures.

# July 2003, ReusableBags.com goes live, advancing the mainstream adoption of reusable shopping bags.

# Each high quality reusable shopping bag you use has the potential to eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of plastic bags over its lifetime.
http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php

Problems:
-    Camels deaths from eating plastic bags
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/01/24/44652.html
-    Plastic bag littering and trashing Dubai environment
-    Consider the following shocking facts about plastic shopping bags:

1. -    Plastic bags are made of polyethylene
2. -    Polyethylene is a petroleum product
3. -    Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption
4. -    Four to five trillion plastic bags are manufactured each year
5. -    Americans use over 380 billion polyethylene bags per year
6. -    Americans throw away approximately 100 billion polyethylene bags per year
7. -    Of those 100 trillion plastic bags, 1% are recycled
8. -    It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down
9. -    As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain
10. -    Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die per year by ingesting plastic bags
11. -    Plastic bags are often mistaken as food by marine mammals. 100,000 marine mammals die yearly by eating plastic bags.
12. -    These animals suffer a painful death, the plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death
13. -    Plastic bag choke landfills
14. -    Plastic bags are carried by the wind into forests, ponds, rivers, and lakes
15. -    There are alternatives to plastic bags. All of this death and pollution is unnecessary.

http://environmental-activism.suite101.com/article.cfm/say_no_to_plastic_bags

Solutions:
-    Approved Products — Compostable Bags
Compostable Bags are designed to disintegrate and biodegrade quickly and safely, when composted in a professionally managed composting facility. All approved products meet stringent, scientifically based specifications: ASTM D6400 or ASTM D6868. These products are ideal for organics diversion programs.
http://www.bpiworld.org/BPI-Public/Approved/1.html

-    Successes in other countries:

1. In January 2002, the South African government required manufacturers to make plastic bags more durable and more expensive to discourage their disposal—prompting a 90-percent reduction in use.
2. Ireland instituted a 15�-per-bag tax in March 2002, which led to a 95-percent reduction in use.
3. In the early 1990s, the Ladakh Women’s Alliance and other citizens groups led a successful campaign to ban plastic bags in that Indian province, where the first of May is now celebrated as “Plastic Ban Day.” Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom also have plans to ban or tax plastic bags.
4. Supermarkets around the world are voluntarily encouraging shoppers to forgo plastic bags—or to bring their own bags—by offering a small per-bag refund or charging extra for plastic.
5. Some manufacturers have introduced biodegradable or compostable plastic bags made from starches, polymers or poly-lactic acid, and no polyethylene—though these remain prohibitively expensive and account for less than 1 percent of the market.
6. The organizers of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, were able to collect 76 percent of the food waste generated at the sports venues and athletes’ village by using biodegradable utensils and plastic bags that composted as easily as the food and eliminated the need to separate the garbage.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1499

-    Gulf News began the year 2008 with the ‘No to Plastic Bags’ campaign, in response to hundreds of dying camels and gazelles in the desert from eating plastic bags.
http://archive.gulfnews.com/indepth/notoplastic/main_story/10267069.html

-    http://plasticbagfreewales.co.uk/
http://plasticbagwatch.blogspot.com/

Case Studies:

Case 1: (Thanks to Amna for sending me this ^^)

60Bag by Katarzyna Okinczyc and Remigiusz Truchanowicz

Polish designer Katarzyna Okinczyc and photographer Remigiusz Truchanowicz have designed the 60Bag, a carrier-bag that degrades in 60 days.
60Bags are made of non-woven, flax-viscose fabric, produced with flax fiber from industrial waste.
This technology makes the bags naturally decompose in about 60 days after being discarded by the user.
The bags can be composted or safely burnt, which means they don’t require expensive recycling processes.
http://www.60bag.com/

Case 2:

Quick survey:-

Please answer here

Key message:

Your bag, your choice
Toward plastic bag-free Dubai
Say No to plastic bags
Help in making Dubai plastic bag-free city
Save the camels
Feel for the dying camels, stop plastic bags littering
Feel for Dubai environment, No plastic bags

Key Words:

simple, fun, happy, help, save, re-think, green mind, free,

Advertisement:-

-   Logo
it’s still difficult to fine the name for this project since it’s common to the other similar projects about the same topic around the world. I want a name that can only suit the issue for Dubai only. so it has to be an Arabic word that means it all. I want a nice name that has a ring to it and easy to memorize even to foreigners. A short name would be perfect. still working on it.

Kees كيس

seeKKees

Green Kees

GKees

La Kees

No Kees

Re-Kees

Ban the Kees

Inspiration:

-    Posters (3 maybe)
Examples I like:



I want to use the same idea of the poster that I came up for the WET campaign in my campaign which is a poster that people interact with till it disappears completely & nothing is wasted. I want people to be aware of the problem and have this peice of the poster to remind them of the issue.

Sketches: soon ^^

-    Video

I want to do a video like those 2 examples, I hope I will -_-’

I really love this one [I know it has nothind to do with this project but the way the designer made it is so simple & touchy, he only used his sketches and animated it useing photoshop CS3 frames and After effects]
Draw with me:

Story:-
Hi I am a plastic bag, One day I was in a shop and a guy came in to buy some food. After paying, the cashier put his things inside me and I was carried away. He went into his car and drove off. I was laying there in the seat beside him. He took the food out of me and then just threw me out the window. I flew around in happiness, carried by the wind, till I got stuck on a tree. Suddenly came a camel looking for food and it saw me and swallowed me. I am still alive inside it, but the camel died because of me.
you see, it’s not my fault.

Story board: coming soon ^^

-    Website

Examples I like:
Make the switch

We Are What We Do

Applications:

- B.Card

- Brochur

- Distribution item

The idea is to have this plane jute bag & let people personalize it as they like useing markers, paint, badgets, crystals, sewing, etc.

The thing that I found out about why people dont use those bags is that they look ugly or it’s not their color or even not unique enough, so I thought if they personalise them no one will have the same bag, it’ll be one of a kind and only you can make it & wear it.