Goal: I am creating my toolkit because as Parsons students, we are constantly buying art supplies and items to use for school, but frequently dont use all of what we purchase. We spend tons of money on a large pack of something but only need one or two and the rest gets thrown out or shoved in a drawer never to be used again. Not only is this wasteful of the items, but a waste of our money. For example, I needed a few popsicle sticks for a studio project and had to buy a whole pack but did not want the rest so they are just sitting in my dorm when they could be given to someone else who might want them. For my toolkit, I decided to create supply donation boxes to be spread out across campus buildings. There could be one in the lobby of every building and students would bring all the supplies they no longer want or need and put them in the box. The items will be collected and brought to a location on campus where students can look at what is available and take what they need at no cost. This will save people money and helps eliminate the waste of products. There is no downside to this solution. So many otherwise unused things will be given a home and we will all save money in the process. This is sustainable because we wouldn’t be contributing to purchasing more items and are combatting waste at the same time. I will also create a brochure on educating students about how to recycle their supplies at the dropbox and times they can come to pick up donated items. I will make a poster creating awareness of the situation and also help advertise my dropbox. I could also create posters for an event or information session that talks to students about waste and how they can help make the dropbox a possibility.
Community justification: This toolkit will help students and possibly even faculty of The New School become aware of the waste of materials that occurs in the school. I believe that the information I provide will make people pay attention and start to change the way they throw out items and reconsider using my dropbox. Hopefully, the dropbox itself will rid students of their unnecessary items and also provide tools to those in need, without needing to spend money. With enough community involvement, this wicked problem could be solved.
Materials/Form: The dropbox model will be a physical small scale model of the actual box that could be implemented around the campus. The posters and brochures will be inviting and designed with compelling graphics to make students interested in learning about the wicked problem. These enticing graphics will cause people to want to learn more, attend the information sessions, and participate in donating as well.
Sustainable: This toolkit will be sustainable in many ways. The dropbox itself models a proposal for a way for students to recycle used product, rather than dispose of it which leads to trash in landfills. Students being able to take what they need from the donated items saves many people money and fewer students will contribute to capitalism and purchasing fewer items means they aren’t consuming items with packaging and bags, causing more waste. I will print all of my written material on recycled paper and paper that is no longer needed; just like items found in the dropbox. This toolkit will change the system of the community because it will create a working way to help students in need.
Effect: My desired effect of the toolkit takes a few forms. I hope the physical dropbox proposal makes people think about how useful it would be in the community. This realization if large enough could cause someone to actually implement this in the future which I personally would love to see happen. The reading material, in theory, will raise awareness and educate students. The desired effect of that means more students will see that we need better ways to recycle and access materials in the future at this school.
Challenges: The challenges of my proposal are creating compelling visual guides and materials that actually will create change or help students if they were to be implemented in real life. I realize these are just proposals but I hope my plan makes people that read it actually think about it and decide that it is something that should come to life and not just be a project to forget about.
References: I struggled to find references for this project because it is not necessarily an art piece or something I have seen before. I spent a lot of time looking at places that do supply dropboxes but they are mainly charities and have not seen anything like this in place in a school or art environment but I searched for similar things.
- https://www.gogreendrop.com/redcross/clothing-donation-pickup The Red Cross has a program called GreenDrop where they have centers for people to donate gently used clothing items.
- http://www.spiralq.org/who-we-are/ Spiral Q is a program where they ask people to donate art supplies, recycled, and reused items such as aluminum or egg cartons. They take these supplies and use them to make projects and reach out to the community.
- https://www.cradlestocrayons.org/philadelphia/take-action/donate-goods/ Cradles to Crayons is an organization that collects items for children in poverty. They accept clothes toys books and anything a child might need while growing up.
- https://www.planetaid.org/find-a-bin planet aid is just another dropbox that is placed across the country to collect clothes donations.
