The amount of waste we produce on a day to day basis is often hard to grasp. As part of the experimentation phase to provide creative solutions to help to increase recycling targets for a packaging company, our team firstly delved into experimentation. The project was a collaboration between the members of Blooming Reality, Central Saint Martins and DS Smith to provide an innovation strategy proposal for the corrugated packaging company that constantly seeks for sustainable and innovative solutions.

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By starting to have a deeper look at our own consumption habits, we analysed our own shopping patterns and observed behaviour change towards choices we make when deciding what to purchase and how to package. It helped us notice, often overlooked, amounts of waste we produce and pay greater attention to choices we have and current recycling opportunities.

 

In a secondary part of this project our purpose with the Joanna experiment was to test the emotional connections between people and their waste. We designed a poster for our important character: Joanna-the missing bag. A background story for Joanna was presented to the public (we even opened up an email account for her!) During the experiment, we placed the posters in a couple of essential spots, then we observed and analysed how people interact with the experiment and our subject through the account we created. At the end phase of this part of the project, we were pleased to receive emails from people who had concerns about Joanna’s safety.

 

Lastly the first and second rounds of experimentations led to a silent short film about a plastic love story between Joanna, the missing bag, and a new character, Valentin, the plastic bottle. The clip was shown to several volunteers that had to reflect and comment on the film afterwards. 

 

These wide ranging experimentation has revealed that emotional connection with waste could change how we perceive waste and could even change human behaviour on the long-term, if explored in more depth.