Solutions to reduce plastic waste

and how to communicate to our peers

The problems

We received an assignment from the city council of Leiden to help reduce the plastic waste in the city, especially in the canals after the market and along the candy routes. We have two goals. The first goal is to think of solutions to reduce the waste and the second goal is to spread awareness about the problems to our peers.

To handle these problems in the most efficient way we split up into two groups: the communicators and the problem solvers

Research

Once we got our assignment we visited Aaf Verkade, she is the only person in Leiden who is allowed to dive in the canals. She told us about how she collects garbage out the canals and educated us about the wildlife in the canals.

The next day we went on a boat trip through Leiden and fished out waste that was floating in the water. We found an alarming amount of cigarettes and plastic packaging. A lot of the garbage in the canals was blown in by the wind, this was a big problem we had to solve.

Work process

Group 1: the communicators

We started brainstorming about ideas we had about the subject so we could decide which ones were worth taking a longer look at. After brainstorming we decided to focus on the young people because it’s easier for us to reach people of our age. So we thought about how we could be more thoughtful about our trash and where it lands in the end. That is how we came up with the idea of “Memes”, they are not too serious and always a good way to make a subject accessible to young people. One part of the group thought of trash memes and created an account on Instagram called @trashmemesleiden to share these memes.

Besides that another part of the group was enthusiastic to film a video clip called “Weird ways to throw away your trash”. In this video we wanted to sarcastically point out the problem of waste landing on the streets, because this waste is most likely to be blown in the canals by the wind which causes the plastic pollution in the water. Considering that our work like the film and the Instagram account with the trash memes must be advertised for being known, we created posters and hang them up around the school of the Leiden students.

We found out that unfortunately there is not only plastic but also metal in form of cans, bicycles and even fridges landing in the canals and this problem is certainly not only a consequence of wind. That is how we came to the idea of a trash statue which we hope will spread more awareness about the current issues.

Group 2: the problem solvers

We were given the task to come up with ideas to help reduce the plastic waste. The two main issues where the garbage in the canals, especially during the market, and the candyroutes. Candyroutes are the routes students take to the stores they can buy candy and on the way back to school some students throw their trash on the ground instead of in the bin. This creates a lot of waste on the streets of Leiden.

The first problem we tackled was the garbage in the canals. We had to find solutions to the problem of the trash the market creates. Some market people don’t clean up their trash because they don’t have enough time or they’re too lazy. When the plastic is left on the street the wind causes it to blow into the canal. So we had to find a solution to both of these problems

The next problem we has to try to solve was the candyroutes. One of the ways to solve this problem is to educate the students, which was the task of group 1. One solution we had was to place more bins along these routes, but we knew that this alone wouldn’t solve the problem, we had to somehow get the students more involved in cleaning the streets.