I have spent most of the time in Shanghai, China. A city that is as well-known as the Capital of China, Beijing, because of its fast-developing technology and interesting urban view. But development brings not only technology but also waste. According to c40.org, Shanghai’s system is largely affected by waste. Stated in “Tools for system thinkers” article, to clarify a system, I have to first start with drawing a clear boundary. I drew my “telescope boundary” (according to medium.com) as the waste system in the area of Shanghai, and my microscope boundary on Shanghai’s recycling system of daily life waste.
I categorize the system into 3 sections, education, promotion, and action. I mainly focus on education and promotion. Education is more important than Promotion. Comparing to Japan, the reason that Shanghai’s recycling system is collapsing is that they focus on promotion more than education. There are plenty of posters everywhere in Shnaghia about recycling, but it’s, in other words, a passive method of education.
There are also countless recycle rubbish bins, however, people are not recycling. They usually put the rubbish in the wrong rubbish or just throw on the street until street cleaners to come and pick it up. Then what happens afterward, people in poverty picks out all the metal materials in the rubbish bin and all the actual categorize and recycling work are left for the workers who work in the factories. The cycling effect is happening because of a bad start. There are two reasons.
Firstly, As I mentioned before– education. The idea of recycling and what good does it bring has to be spread out therefore comes the desire for people to recycle. And then, for the majority who prefers to recycle, they come to the bin and wonder what count as “recyclable”? What is “Other waste”? How broad is “Other waste”? Without education of what is recyclable resource, it’s difficult for people to start recycling and recycling in the right way.
Shanghai system manager have realized the problem and have “promised to achieve 100% of education on recycling knowledge in high school by 2020.
The second problem, I have discovered it through a survey that the Shanghai government is given out to fill in (https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?). In the survey, the question of whether they should change the design of the logo or the design of the rubbish bin keeps on repeating, and that makes me realizes how inefficient and confusing the logos or the designs of the bins are.
This is something that we as designers can do to make a change. Knowing that design is a large factor and a helper in solving world environment problems encourages me to explore more ways to integrate art with knowledge earned in classes such as Sustainable Systems.
